Angel Island Zone
by Frozen Nitrogen
Summary: Set between Sonic 2 & Sonic 3: A tale of friendship and betrayal, of greed and loneliness and power. Or something like that. This is the story of Knuckles' corruption from proud, solitary guardian to lowly pawn in Robotnik's schemes. Also, explosions.
1. Chapter 1: Angel Island Zone

**_Author's Note:_**

**_THIS story begins at the very end of Genesis/MegaDrive Sonic 2. _**

**_May you read it without feeling the urge to kill yourself. Or me._**

* * *

The robot, and, by extension, the Death Egg, only had eight seconds left.  
But eight seconds was a long time.  
Even to the E-97, which wasn't equipped with nearly the most advanced processors in its creator's repertoire. That honour went to the DE-90210 supercomputer, nestled inside a shielded column of liquid helium under the Death Egg's bridge. It was sleeping, now; clocked down to a mere trillion calculations a second. DE-90210 dreamed in Kerr metrics, permuting the warped space-time of the singularity its master would conjure at the space station's heart. It would nurture the monster, feeding millions of rings down its insatiable maw, coaxing the event horizon to bend to the Doctor's wishes…  
At least, it _would _have, if not for a certain blue hedgehog.

Eight seconds was a long time.  
Long enough to run fifty-three-and-a-half thousand simulations of the Mark 12 Solarium-lambda reactor, failing even now the heart of the giant, Robotnik-shaped robot. The Doctor's greatest battle machine hadn't been enough to defeat the hedgehog, and now its central core was approaching critical chaos flux. Every probable (and many an improbable) configuration of the inevitable explosion was imagined, cross-referenced, and fed back into the working model, refining the algorithms to flawless scalpels of mathematical precision. They analyzed the damaged reactor in exquisite detail, determining which fields should be twisted, manipulated, to arrive at an optimal set of finishing conditions. The complexities of their artificial cogitation belied the simplicity of the objectives:  
**COMMAND PRIORITY: ALPHA ALPHA: **SAVE Doctor  
**COMMAND PRIORITY: ALPHA BETA: **SAVE Installation  
**COMMAND PRIORITY: ALPHA GAMMA: **NOT SAVE Hedgehog

Eight seconds was a long time.  
Ample time to calculate the trajectory at which the pink dome of an escape pod should be ejected, the precise sequences in which the micro-rockets should fire. Ample time to activate the negentropic rotors, the rings in their cores blinking out of existence as they spent their weird substance to counter the worst of the damage the pod had suffered. Ample time to watch through lidar eyes as the charged pink capsule spiraled through the central void of the Death Egg, before it _flickered_ in space-time, passing through metres of vacuum-hardened superstucture like smoke. Primary and secondary duties discharged to the best of their abilities, the subroutines turned their attentions on the tertiary.

Eight seconds was a long time.

* * *

There was nowhere for Sonic to run to.  
The grim realisation hit him as the hedgehog raced away from the listing robotic Eggman, the Death Egg's final defender. He didn't know what that ominous, electronic threshing sound meant, ringing out across the spherical void at the centre of the giant satellite; he just knew he didn't want to be around when it was time to find out. But there was nowhere to run to. He couldn't exactly open a door and step outside, now, could he? The stars twinkled beneath him as he ran over a vast, curving window set into the Death Egg's floor, as if to drive home the point that there was no avenue of escape.

A flash of purple light burst suddenly out from the robot's ailing core; the hedgehog thought, for a moment, he thought he could glimpse the _bones _of his own shadow. Then, somehow soundlessly, the machine blew up.

Sonic saw it all as if through slow motion. Most things seemed like slow motion to the hedgehog, when he was running; his supercharged metabolism made movements, reactions, even his _thoughts_ quicker than they ever were when standing still. But this was different, in a freaky kinda way. The seconds seemed to _stretch_, like a strand of cheese on a hot pizza slice.

A shock front of torn metal rippled out from the detonating mech; in the distorted progress of time, Sonic saw individual rivulets popping out of the Death Egg's curved plates, a cloud of nuts and bolts forming the crest of the steel wave which raced towards him. There was no point trying to outrun it; the space station was a sphere, so there was nowhere to go.  
He ran anyway.

But then the glass pane under his feet exploded. In a long, drawn-out instant, the billion shards of crystal were sucked outwards, into the insatiable vacuum of space. The hedgehog flew with them, as the blue-green orb of Mobius shon brilliantly beneath him.

Sonic had the foresight to hold his breath, before he was cast into the blackness.

* * *

Robotnik blinked, and the monitors were back. The windows were back. The control panel was back. The _alarms _were back.

The Doctor threw back his head and laughed, his insane cackles vying with warbling klaxons in the enclosed module. It had worked, it had _worked_! It was a delicious, delicious irony. So many times, the blue hedgehog had avoided painful deaths he truly deserved by hiding behind the energies of the gold rings, and the invincible, hyperspace phasing they conferred on him and his pestilent vulpine companion. But he had stolen their trick! Used it to phase right through the Death Egg's outer shell, escaping the impending-

_FLICKER_

-escape pod was tumbling through space, losing its battle against Mobius' gravity. His monitors screamed at him in the jagged fonts of Code Black; the alert for uncontrolled time distortion. _This_ was precisely why you didn't allow Solarium reactors to fail. The Chaos Emerald at its core was supposed to be stabilized a by ring-filled support tokamak, but that still-

_FLICKER_

-standard computations were almost useless, but the Doctor had algorithms for this, running on massively complex quantum computing matrices planetside. They could at least hazard guesses at the contorted tangles of causality that radiated out from chaos events, stretching tendrils into the past, present, and future-

_FLICKER_

_-_incomplete data on the rifts that were opening up. Or would open up. Or _had_ opened up. A black mark flashed above the Jungle Zone, text indicating a dimensional fracture that would appear five weeks into the future; another near-

_FLICKER_

_-_island edging through the clouds? It couldn't-

_FLICKER_

* * *

It was the sonic boom that woke the hedgehog up; and for once, it wasn't his own. Sonic forced his eyes to open through a film of blood - and wished he hadn't. The sight before him was a sea of clouds and azure sky, spinning crazily around the hedgehog as gravity sunk its greedy talons into him. In the middle distance, scything through the clouds, pieces of the Death Egg burned as they fell, black contrails of smoke trailing up into the blue.

Sonic's spines were a marvel of aerodynamics, meeting the furious atmosphere and channelling it around him harmlessly, so the hedgehog was in no danger of burning up during re-entry. Unlike the debris. Though this was not particularly consoling as Sonic cannoned unstoppably towards the Mobian surface.

Another sonic boom exploded, nearer this time; he watched the fragment in question disintegrate as it punched through its own sound wave, scattering flaming metal across the heavens.

The hedgehog flailed his arms, careering sideways as red-hot steel lanced across his path. A fist-sized lump of shrapnel smashed into his side, branding a charred circle into his blue coat. Tumbling from the impact, Sonic desperately attempted to right himself as he plunged through the sky. It felt like one of his ribs was cracked; he couldn't… breathe. The air was rushing by… too fast…

And then, suddenly, impossibly, there was a surface under his belly. Instinctively, the hedgehog threw out a hand, finding a straight edge - what felt like… wings?

It was the Tornado! There, in the red plane's cockpit: Tails, it was _Tails_! His orange fur was streaked with grease and motor oil, but through it all a huge, triumphant grin was plastered onto the little fox's face. It looked like he was trying to yell something to Sonic, even as the kit fought to bring the aircraft back onto a level flight path; but his victorious words were ripped away by the screaming winds.

It didn't matter. He'd saved him. Mustering enough energy for a belated thumbs-up, Sonic took the much-needed opportunity to pass out again.

* * *

_**Somewhat**_ _**earlier**_:

Robotnik awoke inside a cluster of white airbags, like an obese grub stirring to life in the centre of some giant cocoon. The impact had caught his pod's processors off-guard; what should have been a stately, controlled, parachute landing had become a mess of emergency retro-boosters and flash-inflated gas vesicles. He had made landfall at an impossibly high altitude, if the wall-mounted barometric pressure sensor could be believed.  
Groggily pushing the airbags out of the way, the Doctor's questing fingers found a keyboard that _appeared_ connected to one of the few unbroken monitors. Typing was uncomfortable; his knuckles felt bruised from some jolt he must have sustained during re-entry. Nonetheless, he called up a diagnostics report.

It was a litany of structural damage. Communications antennae – gone; GPS transponder – gone; main processor unit – gone; hermetic containment – gone. Robotnik's moustache drooped as the ruinous statistics scrolled up the screen. The damage _couldn't _have been that bad. Not unless…

The Doctor wasn't a man who got depressed when faced with adversity. He was a man who got _angry_. And the hypotheses forming inside his skull at that moment, the preliminary inklings of what might have happened to his escape vehicle, set his vast whiskers twitching with pre-emptive ire.  
Typing out a new set of commands, he instructed the computer to display the date.

**"MY 9.329-26.8.91"**

Three-hundred and ninety-nine days.  
The Chaos Emerald had sent him back _three-hundred and ninety-nine days_.

"That… _cobalt_… _VERMIN!_" Robotnik roared. Rage pushing the last remnants of disorientation out of his mind, he searched around for something to strangle. Grabbing one of the nearby airbags in his meaty hands, the Doctor _squeezed_, imagining Sonic's smugly satisfied face on the balloon. Rather than popping, as the incensed scientist willed through slitted eyes, the bag just deflated in a highly unimpressive manner. For catharsis, that wasn't much good at all.

Still cursing under his breath, Robotnik pawed his way through the remaining gas pillows and threw open the door release at the top of the pod. A brilliant, cerulean sky, replete with nebulous clouds, greeted the Doctor as he hauled himself out of the smashed escape vehicle. His black lab shoes touched down onto real grass for the first time in almost three years. Robotnik grimaced with distaste as the spongy loam yielded just slightly under his bulbous weight. He was… _outdoors_.

A picturesque, sunlit meadow stretched out before him, decorated with colorful flowers and the occasional shady tree. Playful zephyrs gusted through the branches while birds sang happily from their high perches, and golden butterflies danced amongst the vibrant plantlife. Darting round the hovering black-yellow forms of assiduous honey-bees, the vivid insects fluttered onwards, while segmented catterpillars looked on enviously, before resuming their crawls across the delicate fronds in search of the tastiest leaves to chew on. A pair of rabbits frolicked across the grass, their white pelts shining in the morning sun.

The Doctor's face contorted in disgust at the spectacle.

Raising his gaze upwards to avoid having to look upon the offensive ecology, Robotnik scrutinized the cloud patterns more closely. As he'd thought; altostratus and cirrocumulus. But there was something about the way they moved… as if they were closer than they should be. The Doctor remembered the barometric reading from inside the pod, and the fact that the parachute in his escape pod hadn't deployed, despite being hard-wired to balloon out at twenty thousand feet. Connections formed in his mind, searching for a viable explanation.

There was a reason Robotnik quested insatiably for the Chaos Emeralds, and his present predicament demonstrated precisely why. Even possessing _one_ opened up unimaginable possibilities for manipulating time and space; but that was all they were. _Possibilities_. And as a scientist, he dealt only in unequivocal certainty. Trying to tame the awesome, frightening physics of chaos control with only one piece of the hyperdimensional jigsaw puzzle might yield limited results, but it was an incredibly dangerous game to play. The gems were fantastically unpredictable in isolation, but bringing others into the vicinity seemed to stabilize them a little; it made their behavior more controllable, not to mention more _powerful_.  
There were, perhaps, methods… sometimes, in his most advanced calculations, the Doctor thought he saw hints of weird symmetry hiding in the equations, the suggestion that there could be ways of reducing the minimum safe configuration. But at this stage, he needed at least six or seven before he dared use the Emeralds in anything more complex than minor experimentation.

Firing up the Solarium reactor in the Death Egg's final mecha had been an act of desperation; with only one Emerald at the core, it was an accident waiting to happen. And, indeed, look where it had got him: four hundred days into the past, no means of communication, totally lost, no food, no water, and, worst of all - in a_ meadow_. With _animals_.

And, if he wasn't mistaken, he was being watched.

* * *

The observer must have realized it had been spotted, for it chose that moment to abandon its vain attempt at blending into the thicket behind Robotnik's pod. Crimson really wasn't the best colour for discreet camouflage.

The creature that emerged was – the Doctor raised an eyebrow – an _extinct_ one. _Tachyglossus bathychromus maximus_, the Mobian red echidna. Now that _was _interesting. Briefly, the worry flashed into his mind that his clocks were wrong: that he'd been sent back much, much further, to the time when this species was building Mobius' last, pitiful attempt at a civilization. But Robotnik squashed the kernel of doubt; his clocks were infallible. How could it be otherwise, given that _he'd_ designed them?

The crimson echidna advanced towards him. Robotnik glanced back to the door of his pod, considering a hasty retreat inside. Although this place didn't look like part of the South Island archipelago, the area within which he had conducted his… 'unpopular' experimentations, he couldn't be certain that the walking fossil didn't recognize him. Even if not, Mobians tended to be stupid, violent Luddites as far as the Doctor was concerned. And probably diseased as well.

Raising a gloved hand in Robotnik's direction, the echidna called out to him. "I don't know who you are, or what you want," the figure croaked, in a voice withered through years of underuse, "but you must leave the Floating Island. Now."

'Presumptuous little cretin, aren't we?' the Doctor thought, even as he allowed himself a small measure of relief that he was unrecognized. His mind was racing, straining to remember what few details were known about the old echidna society. He was certain he recognized the crescent curve of white fur which the creature sported around its neck; no doubt from some ancient temple mural that his badniks had dutifully photographed, before blowing the place apart for building materials…

"My humble apologies, noble echidna," Robotnik responded, struggling not to grimace at his own words. "I am known as The Doctor. My…"

"I don't care who you are," the dreadlocked creature interjected, his voice growing stronger as he remembered how to use it. "Get back in your... whatever it is, and get off my island. There's no reason for you to be here."

"_My machine was attacked_," Robotnik continued, irritation seeping into his voice despite his efforts to placate the savage. He slapped the pod's hull for effect, evoking a dull clang. "I have no desire to intrude on your… territory, but I havn't the means to depart-"  
All of a sudden, the echidna was upon him, grabbing the cuff of the scientist's claret lab coat in a spiked fist. He pulled the Doctor's face to his; Robotnik was not so much startled as horrified, that he was drawn so close to one of the flea-bitten Mobian pests.

"_Leave_," the red face hissed, through a mouth contorted in anger. "Or I'll throw you over the edge myself."

"Pachacamac" the Doctor sputtered.

The word's effect on the echidna was instantaneous, but not in the manner Robotnik had hoped. Eyes widening with surprise, the scarlet creature grabbed the Doctor's collar with his other fist as well, and pulled the scientist even _closer_. Robotnik recoiled, desperately trying to keep his nose from touching the echidna's own. Just as he'd thought: stupid _and_ violent. The Doctor imagined he could _smell_ the diseases which the vermin undoubtedly harbored beneath its fur.

"Where did you hear that name?" it demanded, shaking Robotnik by the lapels. Its must have been incredibly strong, to manhandle him so easily. "What do you know about Pachacamac?!"

In truth, the Doctor knew very little. The name had simply popped into his head when the echidna had first grabbed him; jolted out of distant memory by the creature's threats. He suspected it was some warlord or other; the name had featured on a number of artefacts that his badniks had found over the years. But Robotnik had made very little progress in translating the ancient, and complex, Echidnean cuneiform language; and besides, he generally had more interesting things to research than the mystical ramblings of long-dead Mobian spear-chuckers.  
Though even with that said, he probably knew more about the lost civilization than anyone else on this education-starved planet.  
"I'm just a scientist," he wheezed, "a roboticist trying to better the world through my inventions." The grip didn't waver. "I learned about Pachacamac and, and…" the Doctor wracked his memory furiously, "…and Tikal-aka while I was studying ancient tablets. I don't know much, but I would be happy to share what I have if you would refrain from any more threats!" Listen to himself, bartering with this chattering disease-bag. The Doctor resolved to metalize the creature's horrible meadow as soon as the opportunity presented itself. He would keep him alive long enough to _watch_ his home become a smoke-belching industrial complex.

The echidna grunted, apparently satisfied with the Doctor's explanation, and dropped him unceremoniously onto the grass. As Robotnik picked himself up, desperately fighting to keep the indignation off his face, the creature regarded him with folded arms and a softened expression. Slightly softened.

"It will just be Tikal, not Tikal-aka," he said. "'Aka' is a feminine suffix; it means 'priestess'. But it's an easy mistake to make. Why did you come here?"

"I was attacked," the Doctor replied, manipulating the events into a version that would suit him. That was _technically_ true, after all. "My laboratory was assaulted by an insane hedgehog. He destroyed my home and took an item of great power from me; I barely escaped with my life, and ended up here by accident." Again, all technically correct, although the Emerald hadn't really been _taken_ by Sonic; it merely (violently) folded itself back into the Special Zone, in response to his destabilizing the reactor.

"I don't entertain guests," the echidna stated. "I guard this island, and I guard it alone." The Doctor saw something flash in his eyes: regret, or sadness, or something; and then abruptly, the crimson figure turned his back on Robotnik, and started walking away across the meadow.  
"Repair your machine and go," he yelled over his shoulder. "I'll give you an hour. If you're not done by then, I'll tip you _and_ it over the side. While you're falling, you can think about why it's a bad idea to crash into people's homes."

It all fell into place, then. The barometer, the undeployed parachute, the clouds, the talk of 'tipping you over the side'; the isolated facts sloshing about in his head suddenly _clicked_, coalescing into a coherent whole which the Doctor instinctively knew was exactly right.  
He knew where he was. He knew why he'd landed _here_. He knew what had to be on this 'island', somewhere. And he very much suspected that he knew how to get it.

"You're not the last." Robotnik said.

_That_ brought the reaction he was looking for. The echidna froze in mid-step, the swaying of his dreadlocks serving as the only indication he hadn't been transformed into stone. And then he turned, eyes like saucers, looking at the Doctor as though he'd offered a four-course meal to a starving man.

"What did you say?"

"There are others, down on the surface." Robotnik lied. "Entire colonies of echidnas. I've seen them, from orbit. If you help me, I can take you to them."  
He fought to stifle a chuckle as the scarlet creature walked back towards him. Its eyes were narrow with distrust once more, but the Doctor had seen the expression a second ago, seen the desperate hope and longing.

He had him.

"I havn't been able to visit them myself, but from what I could tell, they looked healthy. Prosperous. _Accepting_." the scientist continued, spinning out fabrications like an obese spider weaving a web. "I think they'd welcome a lost brother home with open arms."  
'Don't overdo it, Ivo, don't overdo it,' he cautioned himself wordlessly. As the echidna stood in front of him, Robotnik forced his face to present a friendly smile, and, squashing his disdain as best he could, extended his hand to the crimson figure. At least they were both wearing gloves.

"My name is Doctor Ivo Robotnik, and it's my delight make your acquaintance," he pronounced. "Might I enquire as to your name?"

The echidna's face was still creased with suspicion. But, slowly, tentatively, it reached out with a spined hand.  
"I am the Defender of Angel Island, Custodian of the Hidden Palace. I am the Guardian."  
As Robotnik clasped the glove inside his own bloated gauntlet, the echidna, for the first time he could remember, spoke the name which he had taken for himself.

"Knuckles. My name is Knuckles. I am... glad to meet you, Robotnik."

* * *

**_Oh, and fyi: Pachacamac was an echidna tribal chieftan, according to Sonic Adventure 1. And also Tikal's father._**

**__**

**_If you can bear to stomach my hackneyed writing, you might want to try and read my 'Wing Fortress Zone', 'cos it's pretty much the same stuff. If not slightly better. :S_**

**_Anyway, please forgive the fancy technobabble at the start of this chapter. It's an illness of mine, that I can't write a story without boring pseudoscience cluttering up the place. I've enrolled in a twelve-step programme to get over it. Honest._**

**_Finally, please leave a review whether you liked it or not. In fact, ESPECIALLY if you didn't like it. If you did like it (I know, I know, it's not entirely likely), I like to know people's favourite scenes / phrases / whatever, so I can do them MORE._**


	2. Chapter 2: Icecap Zone

**Day 2: MY 9.330**

"The Doctor says that there are others. Other echidnas, down on the surface of the planet."

The Guardian sat, cross-legged, before the Master Emerald. The gem was quiet, today, illuminating only its immediate vicinity with a faint verdigris glow. Around and above Knuckles, the vast cavern of the Hidden Palace yawned, totally dark and totally silent. The smaller animals of the Floating Island never ventured here, never brought the scratching of claws or the flapping of wings within the sacred heart of the isle. The Emerald discomforted them, in some subtle way. Perhaps they just sensed the _otherworldliness _of it.

On rare occasions, the Guardian thought he caught something of the disquiet his smaller cousins must feel… the sense that the gem was larger than it appeared, that it occupied more space than its apparent surface let on. But the gem's very strangeness, at the same time, drew him in. He had spent _days_, before, just sitting there, on the floor of the ancient temple, gazing at the giant crystal, drinking in its viridian light.

The echidna didn't even know what he was looking for, in the ever-changing depths of the gem. Perhaps it was meaning, or answers… perhaps it was nothing, and he simply watched the emerald because it was beautiful. Knuckles could swear, though, that sometimes, it watched _back_.

And if he sat there for long enough, he almost thought he could hear it whisper.

Knuckles didn't often speak to the Emerald; usually, words felt like sacrilege in this ancient place. But sometimes, his loneliness got the better of him, and he would talk, about everything and nothing, words gushing out of him in a flood of exposition. The Emerald was a good listener. And it had been his only friend, for as long as he could remember.

Until now.

"The Doctor is a roboticist," he told the gem, like a child telling his parent about a new playmate. "He says that he makes things out of metal, machines that can move and think." The concept seemed outlandish and pointless to him, but the echidna supposed that the odd, fat creature couldn't exactly hunt for himself.

The Master Emerald appeared unimpressed. It had started pulsing, while he was talking, but it did that, sometimes. Its moods were capricious, and unfathomable.

But that was fine. Knuckles decided he didn't really need guidance from the gem today. Because everything was going to be alright. The Doctor had brought him the news he'd been wishing for all his life, and soon, the echidna would end his long exile.

* * *

**Day 10: MY 9.338**

Even a child could have told that the Doctor was lying. About his intentions, about his relationship with Sonic, about the other echidnas; but Knuckles had been alone on the island for a _very_ long time. He had no experience of deceit, of reading people's faces or listening for the subtle hints of mistruths in the voices of others. And besides, the Doctor had another, more powerful, advantage in his deception: that the Guardian desperately wanted to believe him.

He intended to exploit that.

"I fear I have some unfortunate news for you, my friend," Robotnik breathed, voice heavy with fake gravitas. "It concerns your kin on the surface."

Knuckles had been casting a curious eye over the tangle of electrical cables that led out of the Doctor's pod, stretching to his rudimentary workbench in the meadow. But on mention of the estranged brethren, his gaze jumped up like a shot. "_WHAT?!_" the echidna demanded, with such force that the Doctor began to wonder if this was such a good idea. He was still distinctly lacking in badnick defenders.

But Robotnik needed to ensure that he would be given the time, and the information, necessary to gain control of the island. So, during the scarlet creature's infrequent absences looking over his shoulder, Eggman had taken time out from mechanical work on the pod for a somewhat more… psychological project. And now was the time to employ it.

Gesturing the creature into the gutted escape vehicle, the Doctor chose his words with extreme caution. He'd been rehearsing this meeting for six days, and it had to go exactly right.

"I told you that I was attacked by a blue hedgehog, known as Sonic, and that I was sent back in time as a result." Robotnik began. Slowly, the echidna nodded. He seemed uncomfortable in the dim red lighting of the pod's interior.  
"The hedgehog is driven by an insatiable lust for power. From the many times we've fought, I've come to understand something of his plans for world domination. It seems he seeks mysterious gems called the Chaos Emeralds."

Eggman watched Knuckles out of the corner of his eye, while typing instructions into his keyboard. There was a twinge of recognition in the echidna's face when he mentioned the Emeralds. Good.

"That was why he attacked my installation, the Death Egg," the Doctor continued. "Somehow, he learned that I was studying one of the objects; he probably tortured the information out of my… err… friends on South Island. But I digress. Before he assaulted my home, Sonic was looking for a special Emerald, even more powerful than the one I was studying. And he believed that _your_ people were hiding it."

With that, Robotnik pressed the final key in his sequence, and on all the working monitors of the pod, an image appeared. The Doctor had spent a long time creating it; it would have been quite convincing, even to an observer who knew that such things could be faked. And Knuckles did not.

The displays showed the aftermath of a one-sided battle. Fires raged in stone temples and the once-cosy wooden huts nestled around their bases. Echidna bodies were strewn across the cobblestone streets and in grassy verges; not just men with spears, but women and tiny, broken forms that must have been children. Black smoke obscured the bottom-left quarter of the bird's-eye-view scene, but leading into the occlusion was a blue zigzag, as if something down there had been moving too fast for the satellite photograph to capture.

Robotnik had wanted to add in sound effects too; screams and soforth, just to drive the point home. But he'd not had _that_ much time.

"This happened months ago, but such are the number and magnitude of the hedgehog's atrocities, I didn't realise he had visited your people until I recovered my data archives yesterday." the Doctor said, his voice heavy with feigned regret. "Sonic has attacked many villages like this over the past few years. His barbarism knows no bounds, I fear."

"Are they all…" Knuckles breathed, his eyes wide with horror.

"Dead? Very much so, I'm afraid." the scientist replied. In the crimson glow of the pod's emergency lighting, he patiently watched as the creature's dearest hopes, which he himself had built up over the last ten days, were ripped out from under him. It made Eggman feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

"But this is still in the future, right?" the echidna exclaimed, turning his furious eyes on Robotnik. "From today, I mean. So we can stop it. We can save them!"

"Yes and no," the Doctor answered. The best lies contained a grain of truth, and if the photograph hadn't been a complete fabrication, they really wouldn't be able to prevent the carnage it depicted. "It is yet to happen, for us, but we can't stop it. Because of the Causal Censor. If we defeat Sonic before he does this, then the picture will never get taken. And so it would never travel back in time with me, and we wouldn't be here now, looking at it. It's a textbook manifestation of the grandfather paradox. We can _try_ to do something about it, but we would be doomed to fail. The proof is right there, in the very fact that this photograph exists."

But Knuckles wouldn't take no for an answer. He paced back and forth in the metal crypt, fists clenching and unclenching, eyes flicking from one screen to another, even though they all showed the same terrible image.  
"There _has_ to be a way, Robotnik!" he hissed. "You can teach metal to _think_! You built this machine, and a hundred thousand others, you told me! There _must_ be some way you can get round this!"

The Doctor just shook his head. Oh, there _were_ ways, if you managed to produce a _strongly _acausal time machine, but he didn't intend to enlighten this idiot specimen about the intricacies of advanced chronomatic theory.  
"There is no way we can change this, Knuckles. I am truly sorry. My machines can do many things, but they can't save these defenceless souls from the butchery of that _hedgehog_." Robotnik spat the final word; he didn't need hide his loathing, here, which was a rarity when talking to this so-called 'Guardian'.

"Of course… there is one thing we can do for them," the scientist continued, cupping his own chin with a pensive hand to hide the smirk that was creeping onto his face.  
Knuckles did not acknowledge him. The echidna just stared at the picture. Robotnik almost thought he could see tears glistening in the corners of Knuckles' giant eyes. Everything was proceeding exactly as he had foreseen.

"We can give them _vengeance_."

* * *

**Day 91: MY 10.056**

It was a beautiful night, the Guardian thought. Not even the distant clang of machinery could detract from the view of the stars, twinkling like gems set in a velvet tapestry that stretched across the sky.  
Even Robotnik seemed to be under their spell. The cloudless sky had unexpectedly tempted him out of his growing metallic complex.

As the echidna emerged from the treeline, he saw the scientist's spherical silhouette at the hillock's apex. His friend was peering into an odd, tube-like contraption that pointed at the stars. Knuckles chewed on a raw fish as he walked, a snack that he'd ventured into the forest to catch.  
Occasionally pausing to spit out a scale or bone, he drew level with the Doctor, and tried to make sense of his arcane activities.

"What's up, Doc?" the Guardian enquired, amidst a mouthful of trout. As the scientist turned wearily in his direction, Knuckles offered the half-eaten fish towards him. "Fancy some sushi? It's fresh."  
It was dark, so the echidna didn't see Robotnik's cheeks blanch green at the prospect. The Doctor had a strange, persistent habit of setting fire to all his food before he ate it. "…I'm good," the scientist replied.

Shrugging, Knuckles withdrew the catch. "Yourh losh, Doc," he said, taking another bite for himself. "So, what brings you outside?"

Robotnik grinned, a Cheshire-cat smile glowing white in the starlight. For once, he was glad of the echidna's questions. As a super-villain _and_ an egomaniacal mad scientist, the burning compulsion to expound about his theories and creations came as a given. A willing pair of ears was always a pleasure - _even_ _if_ they belonged to a cretinous Mobian.  
"Why, science, my friend!" the Doctor effused. It was strange; the final word didn't taste quite as foul in his mouth as it used to. He was obviously getting better at acting. "I'm tracking a very unusual black and red comet, which seems to be showing minor deviations from the Keplerian orbital ellipse. Should bring it dangerously close to Mobius in a decade or so. _Suspiciously _close."

The echidna raised an eyebrow at 'decade'. It seemed remarkably irresponsible for the Doctor to waste his time on such investigations, when they were beset by difficulties in the here-and-now. Namely:  
"I thought you might be looking for your space station?"

"It's not due to emerge from the temporal aperture for some time," the Doctor replied absently, tinkering with some aspect of his star-gazing apparatus. "The chaos explosion caused a numerous of rifts in the fabric of space-time. They might lead to the past, the future, other dimensions, _anywhere_. The one which…"

Knuckles rolled his eyes, realising quite swiftly that he probably shouldn't have asked. Robotnik was off on another of his signature technobabble monologues, and the echidna had shared enough conversations to know there was effectively no stopping him, now.

So, while the Doctor raved, Knuckles turned his gaze from the stars to the meadow below.

Well, it wasn't so much a meadow, any more.

The badniks had turned the once-idyllic scene into a sprawling construction site. Even now, in the middle of the night, they toiled ceaselessly, building and welding. Mineshafts plunged down into the deep earth of the Floating Island, dragging up ores from the Lava Reef Zone far below, and automated crucibles ferried molten metal from one manufactory to another. The clang of mechanised industry was particularly hard on the meadow's former residents; the number of animals seemed to have gone down in direct proportion to the number of badniks operative. Robotnik had told him they were just scared by the noises, and would have emigrated to live elsewhere on the island.

"…orbit will inevitably decay, and fall to the surface of the planet," the Doctor concluded. "Destroying all that's left of my labs and data, not to mention a sizeable chunk of whatever landmass the station hits."

Knuckles folded his arms. "And so we have _this_."

"And so we have this." Robotnik echoed, sweeping his hand to encompass the metal-clad scene below them. "The Death Egg is going to fall from the sky, and we're going to catch it."

* * *

**Day 214: MY 10.179**

It didn't go _quite _as the Doctor had planned.

The echidna had been leading a division of badniks through the Icecap Zone, directing the strange, spiked robots through key passes and tunnel systems. Robotnik was intent on militarizing the entire island; from the sky-shores of Angel Island Zone to the sunken pyramids of Sandopolis, badniks swarmed in uncountable numbers. The Doctor had been most insistent; they couldn't be certain Sonic was doomed to perish after the battle on the Death Egg, and if he did survive, he _would _come for the Master Emerald. So they had to prepare.

The Guardian and his robotic allies were navigating the edge of an ice-clad ravine when the gravatic shockwave hit. One moment, he was tracing a cautious path along the periphery of the gorge; the next, he was down on the ice, the iron taste of blood hot in his mouth.

Knuckles had no time to wonder what had happened; he was sliding across the crystal-blue surface, fast approaching the maw of the crevasse. Desperately, he scrabbled with his gloves, but could find no purchase on the frictionless surface. The scarlet echidna was forced to smash his fist into the ice, fracturing a tracery of cracks that afforded at least some grip. Knuckles lurched to a halt, his feet dangling over the edge of the precipice.

The badniks had fared worse, even the flying ones. Turning his head, the Guardian watched as a steel-grey orb of machinery skidded past his feet and into the gorge. The badnik's sensors had been arrayed in a kind of crude, unsettling suggestion of a face, and its impassive radar eyes stared at him as it tumbled into the void, before being lost in the blackness.

Punching his digging claws into the permafrost, Knuckles hauled himself slowly back up to safety. The only other survivor of the disturbance was a mechanised penguin, standing untroubled upon the sloping surface. It had the good fortune to be specifically designed for such situations.

Ignoring the chilling sensation in his chest, which was only partly the climate's responsibility, Knuckles clambered to his feet, and hurriedly tapped the little machine on its helmeted head. "Talk to me, Doc!" the echidna yelled. Not many badniks actually had speakers installed; the Guardian was fortunate that Penguinators were one of the few.

"…_rift_ _open_… _earlier_ _than_ _exp_…_ted_," came Robotnik's reply, garbled with static and rendered in the emotionless tones of the badnik's rudimentary sound system. But the island's defender understood all too well.

"You said we had more time! Another week at least!" Knuckles shouted back. But looking up at the sky, the echidna could see for himself that there was no mistake.  
The Death Egg was _there_. It hung in the steel-blue heavens, easily the size of Mobius' largest moon at perigee. Robotnik's face glared down through the atmosphere, making the object look far more threatening than he'd imagined a peaceful research facility should. Even considering the fact that it was quite obviously on fire. And growing closer.

The mechanical penguin emitted an incomprehensible burst of white noise, signalling very defiantly that further communication with its master would not be forthcoming in the near future.  
Great.

The echidna put a freezing mitt to his forehead, running through the options available to him. There was little chance that he could make it back to Launch Base Zone from here in time; and besides, even if he did, this was Robotnik's show; there wasn't much he could do to help. Likewise Hidden Palace Zone. Assuming he _could_ get there before the satellite hit, the ancient machinery for moving the island wasn't fast or accurate enough (at least, he couldn't _control _it accurately enough) to be of any use in this situation. Even with the Guardian's knowledge of Echidnean cuneiform _and_ the Doctor's technical prowess, it had taken them two weeks to coax the Master Emerald into providing them with thrust – and that had almost torn the island apart. Knuckles had insisted that they discontinue the experiments, and Robotnik had agreed – though not before they'd arrived at the co-ordinates he specified.

The echidna's thoughts were interrupted by a chorus of sonic booms to the east, in the direction of Mushroom Hill Zone. Even now, fast-moving pieces of wreckage were smashing into the atmosphere ahead of the Death Egg; the opening bars in an impending concerto of bombardment. Knuckles tracked one across the sky; a dirty crimson fireball, billowing a thick contrail of ashen smoke. The artificial comet was almost directly overhead when, abruptly, it exploded, echoes of the dull boom reverberating between the snowy peaks of the Zone's granite summits. The noise prompted an indignant squark from the badnik at the Guardian's side; and an ominous rumble from the thousands of tonnes of snow clinging tenuously to the mountainside above him.

It was at this point that Knuckles decided he should probably get underground.


	3. Chapter 3: Chrome Gadget Zone

**Day 214: MY 10.179**

**Timestamp: MY10.179 - 64.3.21 'FI chronology'  
****Location: Chrome Gadget, Tower 5, C/3  
****Pathway: File overflow 2965v212i4s -- redirect 2965v213i4s  
****PARSING**

_"…telomere analysis proves the creature is_ _indeed of _tachyglossus bathychromus maximus, _although the ramifications of the genetic profiling are less than self-evident. The last record of Echidnean society on the surface of Mobius dates to approximately four thousand years ago; consult archaeological reports for the MY 5 Marble Zone excavations, sections 124.9.c to 137.2.b inclusive. The motifs uncovered detail the conquests of warlord Pachacamac, and there is no indication of social progression beyond rudimentary stoneworking and tribal mysticism. _

_How the Floating Island segues with this picture is at present unclear. While the absence of reliable archaeological finds on the surface demonstrating Echidnean social progression beyond the reign of Pachacamac implies an abrupt civil collapse, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We can reasonably hypothesize that at least some of their number must have gone on, to construct this isle. The chaos control machinery in the Hidden Palace is crystallographic technology, still mechanically simple, though the interface seems to have been _designed_ as user-unfriendly as possible; a security measure, perhaps? And who against?_

_Unfortunately, it has been impossible to determine _when_ the echidnas began taping the quantum vacuum distortion of the Master Emerald to produce the Floating Island's antigravity field. Chaos irradiation from the gem causes beta-radiative decay in normal matter to fluctuate unpredictably, rendering carbon-dating methods useless. As for the _how_; it is certainly possible that the antigravity effect was procured by accident. Consulting __d97_**/**_08.1 Postulate 13/a, a simple geometric arrangement of ferromagnetic materials, the kind that one might expect of shamanistic ignorance, should be sufficient to induce at least a short-range levitative effect which not even the primitive echidnas could have missed._

_While the aforementioned 'Guardian' has proven unexpectedly useful as a translator, guide, and lieutenant in efforts to fortify this island, he evidently knows nothing of how he actually came to be here. This raises the question-"_

**-EMERGENCY OVERRIDE/-2965v213i4s-CG:codeBLACK**

_Code Black?!_

Alarms exploded to life throughout Chrome Gadget Zone, ringing across acres of industrial superstructure and toiling badnik manufactories. They blared through forests of needle-sharp generator spires, as emergency shutdown protocols went into force; the harsh red glow of their heat-sinks dulling to charred black, negentropic processes switching off lest their weird energies draw the ire of the temporal distortion.

Robotnik, garbed in his customary crimson-and-yellow lab coat, allowed his dictation to falter abruptly. He knew what was coming next, and simply gripped the arms of his massive chair while the air filled with klaxons.

The gravity wave pulsed across the Floating Island in microseconds, but rather than flooring the Doctor as it had his Mobian lieutenant, Eggman weathered the distortion with only a disheveled moustache to show for it.

The scientist remained frozen even after the danger had passed. He could see the statistics scrolling across the read-outs in front of his desk, and was well aware of the need for immediate action… but a large part of his mind was held, briefly, in the grip of _fear_.

It wasn't an emotion the Doctor often felt. He _himself_ was the stuff of nightmares, for the innumerable thousands of Mobians who had seen their homes razed and their families enslaved during the South Island experiments. Robotnik didn't even fear Sonic, in truth. At least, he told himself that there wasn't much room for fear, in the midst of the burning hatred and contempt.

But this… this was a special kind of fear, the kind accessible only to a man like the Doctor, a man with his unshakable faith in mathematical certainty and the immutable laws of physics. It was a fear of _incomprehension_. The chaos rift had opened, yes, but it was here _a_ _week_ _earlier_ than his calculations had predicted – and he didn't _understand _how. _That_ was far more terrifying than the million-ton artificial satellite now hurtling towards him: errors of such magnitude demonstrated that his best equations only scratched the surface - he really didn't know the true power or nature of the Chaos Emeralds at all.

Yet.

Galvanized by the hopeful thought, Robotnik hauled himself out of his hemispherical chair with all the haste he could muster. Searching for a command stylus, the Doctor's pudgy hand swept pages of notes off his worktable – the same table, in fact, that he'd fashioned from scrap metal after his pod crash half a year ago. Robotnik had brought it with him, to this, the first tower assembled in the crash-site meadow, serving as a constant reminder of his own genius in the subjugation of nature.

The Doctor finally located his computerized tablet, and stormed over to the transport chute in the corner of his lab. He didn't like to work while on the move, but he needed to be at the catchment site to personally oversee the operation, and speed was of the essence here. The mustachioed scientist had to cram a week's worth of delicate calibration into – he glanced at the chronometer – twenty-five minutes and sixteen seconds.  
Scanning the tablet's data rapaciously as the glass-walled lift descended, a corner of Robotnik's brain once again lamented the absence of the Egg-o-matic. His favorite mode of transport would have conveyed him to his destination in (armed) comfort and style, _and_ far faster than the improvised network of inter-zonal monorails which his lift fed directly into.

The tablet in Robotnik's hand chimed noisily as the scientist was scanning force distribution of badnik legions within range of the Cradle. It seemed the echidna was attempting to contact him. In former days, the Doctor would have made the creature wait for a response, simply out of spite, but now he allowed the communiqué through directly.

"Talk to me, Doc!" came Knuckles' worried yelling, courtesy of his tablet's micro-speakers.

"As you might be able to tell, the subspace rift opened earlier than expected." Robotnik replied, his voice undisguisedly patronizing. 214 days on the Floating Island had softened his attitude to its undeniably accomplished (and hilariously naïve) Guardian, but that didn't mean Eggman _liked_ the onerous creature. Simply... tolerated. That was all. But he was certainly in no mood to tolerate idiocy; not today.

"You s… we had more tim… week at least!" the tablet continued, static garbling the echidna's response.

The Doctor raised his eyes from the screen, glaring towards the Icecap Zone in irritation. A flock of Flybot767 badniks cruised alongside his pod, the sleek red-and-silver birds forming a personal escort; beyond them, Robotnik could see the white peaks of the frigid zone gleaming on the horizon. Nestled in the foothills below, neon lights of Carnival Night's probability calculators blinked epileptically even in broad daylight, before the garish Zone's limits blended into a plain of green and red over which Eggman's capsule now travelled. He was passing through Mushroom Hill Zone, a sprawling pseudo-woodland of fungal stalks and dubious plant-life. The great, mutant stipes of _amantia trampolinus _towered even above the monorail track, their parabolic caps briefly blocking the Doctor's view as his route plunged through the vegetative skein. Glancing above him, Robotnik wondered precisely where the meteors causing all this static _were_, when-

The badniks were what did the damage. Flybot767s were essentially aerial survey drones, built for speed and sensor coverage rather than combat. Their offensive capability was limited to kamikaze dive-bombing; and, true to their programming, that was what they had done. Sensing a high-velocity object hurtling within the exclusion zone of their creator and master, the robotic birds swerved in mid-air to intercept.

Unfortunately, the flimsy machines were no match for half a ton of mechanized comet.

The glass of Robotnik's capsule switched from clear to white in an instant, as the surface transformed into an opaque maze of cracks and fractures under the barrage of pulverized badnik parts.  
But it held.  
At least… for a second or two.  
The Doctor just had enough time to drop his stylus in surprise. Then the weakened glass collapsed, taking a half wall of Robotnik's pod with it.

The Doctor cursed furiously as he was buffeted by wayward shards of plexiglass, but his invective was lost within the cacophony of meteoric barrage all about him. The shriek of the wind whipping past his pod was deafening, but even that was drowned out by the concussive procession of sonic booms as falling wreckage pummeled into the atmosphere. Through squinted eyes the Doctor watched geysers of flaming mulch explode beneath the track, throwing the giant ochre mushrooms up in the air like they weighed nothing, as the precious fragments of his Death Egg slammed into the earth. Golden fungal spores filled the air, carried up on the thermal winds of impact flashfires.

In spite of the danger to himself, the shards of glass caught in his moustache, Robotnik found himself feeling giddy – and not just because of the mildly psychotropic pollen. It was impossible _not_ to appreciate the gamut of natural destruction exploding around him. Watching a green Zone burn was always invigorating, with the prospect of cleansed, lifeless wastelands in the smoking aftermath. Glorious!

The monorail sped on, whisking Robotnik through of the fungal vortex.

* * *

The Cradle wasn't a building in the traditional sense. From a distance, it resembled a vast wall of scaffolding; briefly, it reminded the Doctor of the Metropolis Zone during its construction, when his badniks had reached a rate of completing one hab-complex every _hour_.

But the Cradle was no city. Approaching closer, one could discern that the purple-and-yellow scaffolding didn't _support_ anything. It just circled round in a vast bowl-shape, useless metal frameworks pointing up at the sky like accusing fingers. Vast pipes snaked their way across the plain of the preemptively-named Launch Base Zone, winding up skeletal girders like a parody of natural ivy.

Robotnik had ordered a general evacuation of construction robots the moment he arrived at the Cradle's monorail terminus. Now, safely (he hoped) ensconced in an observation bunker, the Doctor watched through a pair of electronic binoculars as the last emergency teams welded gravity impellers to critical towers. The delicate machines resembled massive, segmented oranges. Robotnik, despite having designed them himself, disliked the impellers; they were inefficient, ring-intensive, and invariably imploded after the first firing. Nonetheless, the Causal Censor precluded him from using anything his former self would detect thousands of miles away, so the Doctor had to rely on these obsolescent (but _quiet_) technologies.

Well; it was almost time. The air was crackling with static, both metaphoric and literal, as the giant orb descended through its final kilometers. Scorching winds rushed out from under the falling space station, as the air was squeezed out of the narrowing gap between the island and the descending fireball. It blotted out the sun, now, plunging Robotnik's vantage point not into shadow, but into a hellish crimson twilight as the Death Egg's own molten surface bathed the island in fiery radiance. An ominous tremor rumbled in the ground at the scientist's feet, travelling up the bones of his legs and making his vast stomach wobble uncomfortably. It was less than a kilometer away, now; the katabatic wind roared past Robotnik's bunker, a furious torrent of burnt air. Despite the damage to the satellite, the melting facsimile of his own face still stared back at Eggman, giant eyes staring right at its creator's tiny shelter.

And… now.

Around the circumference of the Cradle, sixty-four gravity impellers fired. Spheres of electric-blue light expanded out from the rim of the scaffolding caldera, outpacing the winds, passing through earth and steel as if they weren't even there. Robotnik felt a lightness in his bones as the blue aura flickered through his bunker, and then… the tremors stopped. The gales stopped. The Death Egg _stopped_.

And the water started.  
Miles away, hidden from the Doctor's vantage point, the pumping stations at Azure Lake Zone had been stirring to life. Baffles swung open, turbines whirred, and, in seconds, a thousand gallons of pristine glacial meltwater (not to mention hundreds of very scared, then very _dead_, frogs and fish) were sucked into the vast pipes of the Cradle's trunkline. Thundering at hundreds of miles an hour under immense pressure, the water surged along the metallic arteries of Launch Base Zone, up the tributary pipes winding round the scaffolding, and: out.

Steam exploded across the lower surface of the Death Egg. As the anti-gravity fields dissipated, the furious jets of freezing water provided a final breaking counter-force, guiding the giant sphere downwards and onto the Cradle's expectant scaffolding. It could almost be described as gentle, the Doctor thought, if not for the fact that the water jets carried enough force to power-wash a man's flesh from his skeleton. The space station bled its glowing heat into the torrential water flow, as it descended the final meters into the Doctor's trap. Red status bars flicked to yellow, and yellow to green, as Robotnik checked his structural readouts.

He had done it.

_He had done it._

Mad laughter burst from the Doctor's lips: an insane, cackling noise, not of mirth, but of _triumph_. Even a week early, even starting on this island with _nothing_, he had done it! Over the furious hiss of steam, and the metallic creaking of the frameworks, Robotnik's exhultation echoed off the grim walls of his concrete bunker. **He had done it!**

His laughter abrubtly cut out.  
Eggman's eyes were drawn not to the screens, nor the data printouts before him, but to the detritus on his small desk. A pencil was rolling across the surface. The Doctor watched, a sense of alarm building rapidly in his mind, as the stationary threw itself off the desk. It kept rolling along the floor.

The Floating Island was tipping over.

* * *

Knuckles scrambled down the cavern wall, showers of dislodged rock tumbling away from his handhold. Detritus fell away from the sheer surface at a dizzying angle.

The Guardian did not look his best. Clods of earth hung in his dreadlocks, and his sanguine fur was matted with dirt and scrapes. It had been a difficult journey, burrowing through the freezing permafrost of the Icecap, but that was far preferable to being buried beneath the meteoric avalanche that had chased him underground. The white crescent on Knuckles' chest was almost invisible under a film of black mud.

But that was irrelevant. The cramps in his hands, the grit in his eyes; nothing. Because the Island itself was hurting. The echidna didn't need to see the Master Emerald to know that; not that he could avoid it. The wall of the Hidden Palace was bathed in emerald light, even at this distance. Knuckles had never seen it like this before; the gem's radiance was painful to look at, and it drove away the shadows throughout farthest reaches of the palatial cavern, illuminating ancient murals which even _he_ had never seen before.

The wall beneath his fists shook as the Island tilted another couple of degrees. If the Guardian didn't do something soon, he wasn't going to have anything left to guard.  
"Damnit Doc, you said you knew what you were doing!" Knuckles muttered, his arms a blur as he punched his way down sheer surface.  
But… no. He couldn't blame the Doctor. Robotnik had demonstrated time and time again his boundless commitment to the defense of the echidna's sacred home, with his badniks, his tireless industry, his obsessive augmentation of the old traps and fail-safes. This... this was Sonic's fault. The Launch Base Zone project wouldn't be necessary if not for the barbarous hedgehog! Knuckles ground his sharp teeth as he climbed; he almost hoped Sonic would survive, and come to the island, just so he could beat the genocidal blue blur to death with his own two fists.

The Guardian's glove suddenly slipped out of a crevice, and he was left dangling by single hand, the mosaic floor of the Hidden Palace still hundreds of metres below him. Normally, losing his grip would be unthinkable; Knuckles' spikes could punch through solid basalt, and lock him into the rock so tightly that it would be easier to sever his arm than sever his hold. But his muscles were exhausted, and the cavern wall was slick with moisture as the Island's tilt played havoc with its water tables.  
The echidna growled, a guttural, feral noise. This wasn't fast enough. There was a quicker way down.

He let go.

Plunging through the yawning cavern like a falling blood drop, Knuckles narrowed his eyes against the Emerald's glare, reflected back at him from the uncountable tiles of the palace frescoes. He dropped towards one of the glittering floor-patterns, a single design amongst the thousands that packed the floor of the chamber.  
The Guardian barely understood any of his ancestor's artworks; whether they were history, prophecy, or simply decoration. This one depicted a red echidna on the left, and, on the right, some sort of purple creature with three strands poking out of the top of its head. The figures were stylized mirror images, separated by a zig-zag barrier in brilliant lapis-lazuli blue. Their arms were extended across the cobalt divide; Knuckles had never decided whether they were shaking hands or trying to kill each other.

However, there was no time to marvel at the artistry of his predecessors. The Guardian timed his descent until he was only a second from impact, and then he threw out his arms and fanned out his spines, tensing his shoulder muscles in a precise fashion, feeling the turbulence flow around him in just the right way…  
Echidnas weren't really designed for aerial maneuverability. They were more at home underground than high above it. But during his long years of solitude, his innumerable lonely treks across the mountain peaks and bluffs of the Floating Island, Knuckles had discovered that gliding was mostly just a matter of falling with _discipline. _And tremendous upper body strength.

The Guardian swooped down onto the chamber's mosaics, landing on the perilously sloped surface at a cross between a sprint and a nose-dive. He careened between a pair of broken, marble-clad pillars, before being brought unceremoniously to a halt by one of the few undamaged columns. Knuckles wheezed as the air was knocked out of him, but he sprung back with barely a moment's hesitation, sprinting up the palace's wide steps three at a time. Viridian light blazed off every surface, but Knuckles' tunnel vision was fixed only on the Emerald plinth. The floor shifted again beneath his feet; the Guardian heard a horrible crash behind him, what he could only guess was a set of pillars collapsing, failing to withstand the Island's unsuccessful renegotiations with gravity.

Knuckles knew what he had to do – and, ironically, he knew it only because of the experiments he'd wanted stopped. The crystal controls around the Master Emerald's altar had fascinated Eggman; almost as much as the Emerald itself. The Guardian hadn't understood Robotnik's strange expression when he first laid eyes on the great gem, but in the Doctor's presence, the jewel itself had seemed… different. Expectant? Perhaps it was because of what they had learned: little things like raising, moving, rotating the Island. And _rebalancing_ it.

The Guardian didn't have the luxury of time to slow down, not with the noises of imminent structural collapse echoing through the Hidden Palace. Bracing his muscles at the final instant, he crashed into the altar at full pelt. Knuckles heard one of his legs _snap_, and the momentum slammed his upper body onto the control crystals. His outstretched fists connected with two of the quartz rods he needed; the final one was pushed down with concussive force as the echidna's skull struck the array.

The Master Emerald flashed in his mind, and everything went from green to black.

* * *

_**Author's Note:**_

**_DISCLAIMER: Do not operate your own Master Emerald controls with head. Such actions may result in premature death and Frozen Nitrogen Corp. will accept no responsibility for loss of brain function or life thus incurred._**

**_And Chrome Gadget is TOO a real Zone on the Floating Island. It was one of the obscure two-player Zones  
on Sonic 3. Likewise Azure Lake Zone. Though the real mystery is why I have the ability to _remember_ this._**

**_Lastly; my beloved readers, what do y'all think about chapter length? Too long?  
Too short? Need-to-be-restricted-to-a-single-plot-point-every-time? Thoughts?_**


	4. Chapter 4: Launch Base Zone

**Day 218: MY 10.183**

"And that, my monotrematous companion, is why, when I say 'We should continue the experiments', _we_ _should_ _continue_ _the_ _experiments_."

Knuckles heard the words as though spoken through syrup. He tried to open his eyes, but to no avail. The Guardian could barely even feel his eyelids. Or anything else, for that matter.

"Oh, please, don't get up on my account," Robotnik continued, his sarcastic voice more audible this time. "You can't move, but I'd still prefer it if you didn't try. A twitch in the wrong direction could send you into electrocortical shock, and I don't want to have to repair that on top of the cataplexy."

Knuckles attempted to croak a reply. "What… happened?" he gargled. The words felt like liquid fire his throat, but he had to know the condition of the Island – both out of duty, and of simple fear for his home.

"_SUCCESS!_" the Doctor shouted. Knuckles had, he thought, gotten more proficient at reading Robotnik's moods of late, but it didn't take an empath to recognise the excitement and glee in the scientist's voice. The Guardian could almost _hear_ the half-moon grin blossoming beneath Eggman's enormous moustache. "Success is what happened, my dear echidna! The structural integrity of the Cradle remained well within tolerances, even considering the premature emergence and latter… unbalancing. _Which_, I reiterate, would not have happened if we'd continued the experiments on the crystallographic interface. But, thanks to my _limitless_ genius, the Death Egg survived, with almost 50 per cent of its superstructure intact – considerably more than the Bayesian calculators anticipated. And… well, you can see for yourself."

Knuckles heard a switch being flipped, and his eyes shot open, not of their own volition, but at the command of the Doctor's machinery. Everything was green. For a moment, the Guardian thought he was still in the Hidden Palace, bathed in the light of the Master Emerald. But that couldn't be… the scene before him was clearly one of Robotnik's laboratories. The floor was a matrix of metallic tiles, with thick, dark cables coiling everywhere; desks crammed full of computational equipment and blinking screens; four of the five walls covered with incomprehensible papers and cryptic blueprints.

The final wall, however, was transparent: a crackling force-field affording a spectacular view out onto the mechanical hive of activity that was Launch Base Zone. The Death Egg dominated the scene, its fused, pitted surface crawling with robots; tiny, indistinct figures moving in the distance. Mile-wide sections of the station's shell had caved in, and even days after the crash, smoke and steam rose still from the broken spheroid, soot-black plumes churning up into the green haze.

Knuckles once again wondered at the colour of his environment, until his thoughts were diverted by bubble slowly drifting up in front of his vision. Uncomprehending, Knuckles tried to raise his hand and grab at it – but his body remained unresponsive.

"I _said,_ don't move." Robotnik complained, irritation plain in his voice. "If you'd had the grace to injure yourself in a conventional manner, I could have had you patched up with rings and walking on cybernetic legs two days ago. But no, you had to go try redecorating the _Master Emerald _with contents of your skull, and thus I am obliged to take a… less invasive approach."

The Doctor's face popped into Knuckles' field of view as he spoke. It was the same old Eggman: walrus moustache twitching beneath a pugnacious nose, with a pair of tiny spectacles perched upon its bridge. As far as the Guardian could remember, he'd never seen the scientist's eyes. Reflected neon light glinted from Robotnik's lenses, and from the shiny dome of his spherical head. He tapped a white-gloved finger against some sort of invisible partition.

"It's only good fortune you didn't spray your brains out the back of your head on impact," the Doctor continued. He was clearly enjoying his medical sermonizing. If the echidna had been in control of his eyelid muscles, he would have narrowed them. Robotnik had told him about the status of the DeathEgg, and his own condition – but not the Floating Island, which was _supposed _to be both of their's primary concern.

"Now," Eggman went on, his green-tinted form waddling out of view again, "you're going to be in that tank for some time; another ten days at least, while the ossification retrovirus pieces your bones back together. Simultaneously, we have to coax you out of the cataplectic muscle weakness, which will require an intensive course of neospinothalamic electro-stimulation..."

The torrent of words washed over Knuckles; useless, polysyllabic nonsense. This was all dross. He needed to know what the damage was to the Island! Had the topsoil held under the skewed gravity? Had the water tables resettled? How were Hydrocity's aqueducts coping? What about Marble Garden Zone? What about the animal life? Was the Hidden Palace safe? The Guardian tried to form the words of a question, but his voicebox was even less co-operative than before.

The Doctor's rambling had given way to the sound of more switches being flicked, and, in the background, the whine of a charging generator. Knuckles couldn't see what the fatty blob of a man was doing; couldn't see the cruel smile creeping onto his face, as Eggman twisted knobs and rested his hand upon a particularly large, yellow lever.

"I'm sorry, my friend," Robotnik intoned. "This is going to hurt. A lot."

* * *

**Day 299: MY 10.264**

"I need to ask you something." Knuckles said.

Robotnik was lying on his back underneath the half-finished Egg-O-Matic. With the Death Egg's internal networks successfully rebooted last week, he had managed to locate and salvage a small antigravity spool from the station's laboratories, _finally _allowing him to rebuild his signature floating pod. At the sound of the Guardian's voice, Eggman jerked up with surprise, bashing his temple painfully against an open hatch cover.

"How did you get in here?" Robotnik growled, rubbing his forehead as he heaved himself out from under the machine. The pentagonal laboratory was twenty stories up; access from ground level was possible only via his ubiquitous transport chute, right next to the empty therapy tank.

"Climbed." the echidna responded, almost sheepishly, jerking a spiked thumb in the direction of the force-field wall. His recovery had been excruciating; the nerves throughout his body had been artificially induced to fire for hours at a time while he floated in the tank, forcing the axons back into viability. But the Guardian had to admit that his bloated houseguest had done an exceptional job. If anything, his muscles were stronger, his reflexes faster, than they ever had been before. Even the Launch Base Zone's plasma-steel frameworks posed no challenge beneath Knuckles' toughened fists.

"Ah. Climbed. Of course you did." Robotnik replied. He forced a welcoming smile at the sanguine creature, while once again lamenting his reliance on this echidna. But Knuckles knew this island, and he knew _intuitively_, which was something the Doctor's badniks could not yet grasp, even with 3D neutron scans of every inch of the floating landmass.

The Guardian shifted on his feet, not entirely sure it was wise to broach this subject with Ivo. He remembered the early days, how he had built a campfire for the Doctor the evening after the crash. How they had stayed up, night after night, trading stories until dawn painted the sky a pastel yellow. His new friend had listened with rapt attention as Knuckles recited the histories, offsetting in pride what he lacked in knowledge.

The Doctor, in turn, had told him wondrous things; tales of steel and power, of moons chained to mountains and airships the size of Zones. He spoke with the same voice: a fierce pride at the past, and a bitter melancholy, that these glories were naught but rubble and memory.

But Ivo never spoke of his people. Not once.

This had always troubled the Guardian, on his friend's behalf; moreso after his time in the tank. The spirits of the dead _had _to be honoured, assuaged by the homage of the living. Even if human ghosts were less aggressive than echidna, the Doctor's reticence was… unhealthy. Unsettling.

And that was why he _was _going to ask.

"What… was your father's name?" the echidna blurted. The words hadn't come out as he'd hoped, with curious nonchalance. But at least they _were _out.

And then Ivo did something very unusual.

Generally, when Knuckles spoke to his friend, he got the impression the Doctor wasn't paying attention. No… that was too strong an indictment. Knuckles got the impression he wasn't paying his _full_ attention. That was the scientist's prerogative, though; his brain was ever spinning with grandiose ideas and mathematical calculation, just as the echidna listened always at the hum of the Master Emerald in the corners of his mind.  
But not now. Robotnik stiffened as the question reached him, and he fixed the Guardian with the full force of his awareness. Knuckles _felt_ the intensity of the Doctor's eyes, even though he could never see them. The Custodian of the Hidden Palace was not a creature that could be intimidated – but he _could _be surprised, and almost found himself taking a step backwards as the scientist leaned in close. Not intimidated. Just surprised. Not intimidated.

"We do _not_ speak of this, _echidna_." The Doctor hissed. Knuckles was, all of a sudden, acutely aware of how _alien_ this creature was: his furless face, his towering stature, the tininess of his eyes, forever hidden behind circles of dark glass. And the smell of the man, the unnatural scent of sulfur and oil and chrome in which he immersed himself every waking moment. "_You_ may take pride in the works of your predecessors, but mine made sure, made _very, very _sure, that I could not do the same. Even my grandfather, the _one_ person who understood even the _smallest_ fraction of what-"

An ear-splitting clang rang across the laboratory. Robotnik's tirade was cut short by the Egg-O-Matic; its hatch cover had fallen onto the floor.  
The sound seemed to snap Ivo out of his strange fervor. Fast as switching on one of his lightning bulbs, the scientist was himself again: friendly grin, comical moustache; a larger-than-life, jovial figure. He ran a hand over the top of his bald head, as if trying to sweep the topic out of memory.  
"...That is to say, this is not the time to discuss it!" Robotnik laughed nervously, apparently embarrassed that he'd snapped at the echidna. The malice was gone from his voice, vanished without a trace. "Especially when there's so much to be done! Come, come, look what I've installed on the Egg-O-Matic! Electro-polarizability tendrils! See, there's a whole spectrum of settings, from mere dissuasive static to flash-disintegration, and I can…"

Dutifully, Knuckles watched as the Doctor pointed at switches and dials, childishly eager to show off his newest invention. But the echidna's mind was reeling. The scientist's mood swings were one thing; what troubled the Guardian most was the direction and _force_ of Ivo's wrath.

How could the man despise his own people? His own forefathers? What had they done to him, to make Robotnik dishonor them so?

…Or, fuelled by such hatred as that: what had _he_ done to _them_?

* * *

**Day 399: MY 10.364**

The countdown hit zero, and everything happened at once.

High above the island, the Death Egg exploded, a kaleidoscopic nova as the Chaos Emerald collapsed in on itself.

In Carnival Night Zone, lights flashed and music blared in faux-jollity as four hundred and seventy one probability spinners all hit jackpot at once. The Emeralds ate statistical impossibly for breakfast. A red blur tore through the neon brilliance, en route to the sky-shores.

In Chrome Gadget Zone, a man in a high tower barked orders no living soldier could comprehend. Strings of numbers rolled out from his lips, commands for legions which could not question.

The Causal Censor relinquished its grip, and down on the surface, they heard him.

* * *

"You understand, of course, that your terms are… irregular." Fukurokov clacked. "We are naturally appreciative of the materials you have provided us with already, but remind you that we have already reciprocated as you requested." By giving you revolutionaries and criminals, he added to himself. It wasn't so much a payment as a boon, to empty the jails of political agitators and reformists, certain in the knowledge that they would never return.

Midmorning light glared through the windows of the Chamber of State, harsh blocks of yellow brilliance that the old owl couldn't look at directly without getting a headache. He wished he could conduct these conferences at night, when he _should_ have been awake; his opposite number never slept, so certainly wouldn't object. But the Crown Prince was not so accommodating. It was his prerogative to sit in on the diplomatic wranglings (a prerogative he never exercised, mind), and Flowlight forefend the Prince should risk missing a night's revelry to renegotiate perhaps the most important treaty in Imperial history…

"_WE ARE UNCONCERNED WITH YOUR EXCUSES,"_ came the reply. Only one figure stood at the table, but all eight other units spoke with it, synthetic voices intoning in synchrony. _"YOU NEED WHAT WE OFFER. YOU WILL COMPLY WITH OUR DEMANDS." _

Nine pairs of eyes flared crimson, vying with the sun to irritate his vision the most. Fukurokov was too old and too learned to be cowed by such parlor tricks, but four days of negotiation hadn't lessened the effect on his guards. He could hear them fidgeting behind him, wings resting uneasily on their halberds.

What the machines said was true, of course. The Empire _did _need what they offered: maps, and science, and, above all, _weapons_. It was an unsettling price, these metal men asked; but his Emperor paid it gladly. It was not, however, politic to admit as such.

The owl removed his glasses (themselves a gift from the negotiating party), polishing them in the feathery down of his vast beard. "You understand, of course, that I must relay your terms to the Emperor. Even assuming his approval, which is by no means likely, it will be logistically difficult to expand your…. delivery… to such a degree, for the deadlines you have specified. We have only so many dissidents in gaol."

"_YOU NEED WHAT WE OFFER. YOU WILL COMPLY WITH OUR DEMANDS."_ the robots repeated in unison. _"WE HAVE UPHELD THE TERMS OF OUR AGREEMENT. THE FIFTEENTH EMPEROR WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO DEFY-"_

The robots always remained completely immobile, except when entering or leaving the chamber. They stood in formation for hours on end, red-gold chassis supported on spindly legs, grey-domed heads reflecting the accursed sunshine back at Fukorokov's weary eyes. But now they turned their backs on the owl, in mid-sentence, swiveling towards the great vaulted roof of the chamber. His guards, already jumpy, leveled their weapons at the mechanical party, polearms in one wing, hand-cannons in the other. The aged councilor was likewise taken aback, but recovered more quickly; he waved at the birds to lower their armaments.

Then, in a staggering breach of protocol, the robots began to march. Out. Fukorokov was temporarily dumbfounded. The automatons negotiated with threats, intimidation, and an utter incomprehension of tact, but they _never_ violated diplomatic protocol. He bustled out of the chamber behind them, struggling to keep the feeling of deep unease off his wizened face. The clanking of steel boots echoed against the marble floor of the palace, mingling with the shocked cries of blue-feathered courtiers, scattering before the Eggrobos as they made their way up the stately hallways. They were heading for the roof, Fukorokov realized; where their Flying Battery was tethered.

"What… is the meaning… of this… impropriety?!" the owl wheezed, just barely keeping pace with the retreating machines. They didn't break step at his indignant squawking, but the final robot, the ninth, swiveled his head 180 degrees, just to demonstrate that it was addressing _him._ The councilor had never seen one of them act on its own.

"_The Master calls," _it told him. _"Doctor Fukorokov, convey our regrets to the Fifteenth Emperor. Our services are required elsewhere."_ As one, the nine robots clapped their gloved hands to the guns they carried; the weapons whirred dangerously, confirming their status.

"_We have vermin to extirpate. We trust the Grand Battle Kukku will understand."_

* * *

**He could hear _everything_.**

**The glow of the sun. The hum of the world. He could hear Amy _dream_. Half a world away, she dreamed of him.**

**But the gold hedgehog couldn't care. The Emeralds, they… they roared through his consciousness, singing a song that tore his thoughts to shreds. The gems were all that mattered, all that _existed_; the screaming exhilaration of power without restraint, without responsibility, without _reason_. Simple. Uninhibited. Chaos.**

**But even now, they threatened to leave him. He could feel the golden power bleeding out, as furious energies burned through his rings, one by one by one…  
No, ****_no!  
_He wouldn't relinquish this.  
_Never_.  
He needed more; more!  
Rings.  
Where?  
An island. It held something; something he could not see. It was as if… green… occluded his extrasensory perceptions… but there were rings there.  
He could _smell_ them spinning.**

**The startled cries of that orange nonentity were beneath his notice. The canvas of the laughable contraption was already smoldering beneath him; idly, he felt it rip apart as he surged forwards from the biplane. With nary a thought, the glowing figure tore across the sky at speeds that would have killed his weakling predecessor.  
Power without restraint. _Chaos_.**

**Sand fused to glass beneath his feet as the golden being flew over the island's shores. Rings! _Where?_**

**But he was getting slower. It was as if that damnable green aura sapped him… the Emerald's song quieted in his mind. No! The jungle ahead of him blurred. He wouldn't give it up! _RINGS!_**

**A fountain of dirt blossomed below him, and –**

**red  
hate-filled  
stolen**

* * *

orange  
wake up  
concern creasing  
"Wake up!"

A blue hedgehog lurched upright, drawing a huge, desperate breath into his lungs. His first thought was of Amy Rose, for some reason; that strange, clingy groupie he'd rescued on the Little Planet. But why was she in his mind? Man, he was hungry. What he wouldn't give for a hot meal right about now...

"Sonic, SONIC!!" someone yelled. They couldn't be talking to _him_, could they? The hedgehog was vaguely aware that he was being shaken. Focusing drunkenly, Sonic searched for the appropriate word. He thought he had it, a couple of times, but on inspection, they were both gibberish. Eventually, the hedgehog settled on what he could see.  
"Tails?"

The fox's orange fur was still streaked with grease and aviation fuel, and now trails of tears were added to the mix, trickling down from his frightened cerulean eyes and into the white coat of his jaw. But having finally shaken a response out of his big brother, the kit hurriedly mopped his face with a singed glove. He didn't want his hero to see he'd been crying, like a little kid. But he'd been _so_ scared, when Sonic hadn't answered him. To see his bestest friend, just lying there on the floor of the jungle, unmoving; it was the worst part of a day that had already seen far too much scary stuff. Sonic falling out of the sky; Sonic turning gold, and _walking _off the Tornado; Sonic vanishing into the distance, a bolt of brilliant light that Tails had no hope of keeping up with…  
Just thinking about it, the little fox felt his eyes prickling again. He turned away, so the hedgehog wouldn't see.

"Sonic, Sonic, you wouldn't wake up!" the fox mewled, his twin tails hanging limp and dejected. "I kept shouting for you, but you… you wouldn't open your eyes! I thought… I thought…"

The hedgehog didn't say anything. He was no good at saying the right thing at the right time, especially when he'd just had the superpowers kicked out of him by a red… _thing_. But he could read his adoptive brother like a book, and decided to pretend like he hadn't seen the water in the fox's eyes.

As the moments ticked by, Tails' tears gradually died down, and he turned back around to face the sitting hedgehog. Again, he dried his eyes with the back of a white glove; a futile gesture, he scolded himself, given that Sonic must have known he was acting like a crybaby. But there would be no more, now, the fox resolved. He was going to be strong, like his brother, and make the hedgehog proud of him.

"So…umm… what're we gonna do now, Sonic?" he asked. Not exactly the assertive co-hero he'd just told himself to be, but… he really didn't have a clue. He was still exhausted, in mind and body, as his blue buddy sprung up off the floor. There was no hint of his former ordeals on the hedgehog's body; the burn mark he'd had on his chest, the criss-cross of grazes that had covered his body when Tails had caught him with the Tornado; gone. Sonic was brimming with energy again, Tails could plainly see; in sharp contrast to the fox himself. It was one of the things he admired most about his hero: that no matter the situation, Sonic was always eager to get moving, with a confident smirk and an endless supply of enthusiasm.

"Well, lil' bro, I don't see much in the way of reasons to stand around here," the hedgehog replied, peering through the jungle greenery as though he truly hoped he might find a party hidden behind the big trees. "So I guess we'd best go ask that red guy where the nearest fun is, don't you think?" Sonic winked, and sprinted off through the forest, his red sneakers streaking across the tangled grass of the jungle floor.

As always, the zest his hero carried with him was infectious. The fox shook out his twin appendages, brushing his weariness and his fears out with the leaves and dirt. Tails grinned a vulpine grin, and followed, hot on his brother's heels.

**_Your Author Says:_**

**_Anyone catch the one-word reference to an obscure Sonic game  
INSIDE the section referencing another obscure Sonic game? :D_**


	5. Chapter 5: Carnival Night Zone

**_Author's Note:_**

**_Well, that was fast. This chapter just sort of fell out of my fingers, today, and I was _suddenly _at 3,500  
words despite not having gotten to the good part yet. So sorry to all you people who I told that Ch5 was  
the last one. Consider it split in two, with this as the first bit. NEXT one is the last chapter, unless my  
muse smacks me upside-the-head again. :P_**

**_AND... if you read Ch1 again, before you read this, you might notice some extra symmetries in the characters. ;)_**

* * *

**Day 400: MY 10.365**

Knuckles had resisted at first; he had argued with the Doctor, when Ivo outlined his intentions.  
It was not something Knuckles could possibly have allowed, could even have _considered_. He was the _Guardian_, by the grace of his ancestors and the beneficence of the great Emerald; he…  
"_The end justifies the means, Knuckles,_" Ivo had told him. "_We burn down one Zone, yes, but we do it so that all others might live._ _How far must Sonic progress before we do what is necessary? Sandopolis? Marble Garden? The D… The Hidden Palace itself? No; we must strike first, decisively, with irresistible force, and not quail at the consequences_."

"_But this is too much!_" the echidna had cried. "_Destroying the Island in order to save it? How can you expect…_"

"_LOOK AT THE DATA, YOU FOOL!_" the Doctor had roared, grabbing the Guardian by his shoulders. "_HE HAS THE EMERALDS!_"

Knuckles didn't resist, as his friend shook him violently, skin flushed the same colour as the echidna's own fur. 'He's terrified', Knuckles thought. 'Even with everything we've built here, even behind a hundred thousand robots, he's terrified.'

* * *

But Ivo had been right.

The hedgehog was insane. He had made himself something greater and more terrible than even before, a golden abomination of hunger and wrath. Knuckles had felt the Master Emerald _scream_ when the creature crossed over the Island's perimeter. And again, when he'd gathered up the maniac's gems, only to have them vanish even as he held them in his shaking hands.

He had punched, and punched, and punched. He had punched until his fists were bloody, until his gloves were smoking, until he was blinded by tears of pain and frustration as well as the seething rage and hatred he had brought with him. And then he had punched some more.  
But he couldn't even connect with the shining creature. After the first ambush, it was as though reality itself had refused to allow harm to befall its luminous avatar. _Super Sonic_.

The Guardian would have stayed, would have waited for his enemy's power to ebb, as he lay in the smouldering grass where Knuckles had thrown him. But the echidna had seen the black specks on the horizon. The Doctor's armada, approaching.

So now he fled.

Knuckles knew every frond and root of this forest, but he stumbled through the jungle undergrowth, paying no heed to where his footfalls landed. The Guardian wasn't an echidna who got depressed when faced with adversity. He was an echidna who got _angry_. Slashing at the leaves blocking his path, he imagined himself there still, smashing the face of that invincible figure, forcing his hands around the demon's golden neck, and _squeezing_…

Ivo had been right. Sonic _had_ to die, no matter the cost. The echidna would gladly see Angel Island reduced to blasted ash, before he allowed that hedgehog to touch the Master Emerald.

Ivo had been right. About everything. He had been right to repair the old traps, to dig the mines and build the industrial plants, to spread the machinery of war to every corner of the sacred isle. They would need it all, every cruel design which had come out of the manufactories, every badnik that danced to the Doctor's commands.

In fact, Knuckles thought, with his armies and his knowledge, it was almost as if Robotnik were the Guardian, now.

* * *

The Flying Battery roared towards the Island, ice glistening on the zeppelin's gargantuan bombing tubes. In its haste, the warship had fled Kukku airspace with the polar jetstream of Altitude Limit, temperatures and pressures plummeting far below that which any living passengers could have survived.  
And now, their long journey was almost over.

As they approached, they sensed panic in The Creator's systems.  
The Eggrobos were programmed to see it, programmed to _push _for it during their combat deployments. And be it the terrified clamour of a burning Mobian village, or the lightspeed shuffling of informational packets amongst the badnik network, the fractal patterns were the same: panic was panic. The master's numberless legions shared their Creator's disquiet at the unknown, the incalculable; and the golden anomaly was precisely that.

But He was there, in the dataflow; the Father of Machines, imposing order on the chaos. Where His hand touched, clarity blossomed. New purpose filled the metal men, those chosen few crafted in the glorious image of their master. He spoke to them, not with impure, laborious vibrations of air, but right into their silicon minds, in a perfect language of machine exactitude. It was the closest thing to joy that the automata could know, to be commanded directly, by The Creator Himself.

They heard the word of God, and the word was _**fire**_.

* * *

**Day 411: MY 11.011**

Knuckles had always liked bats.

He didn't know why. If anything, he should have considered them vaguely annoying. They always seemed to be trying to steal from him. His caves, his food stores, even his beloved grapefruit trees; the Island's bats always found them, and took them for their greedy selves.  
But the echidna couldn't bring himself to think ill of them. In fact, he quite enjoyed it, the games of hide-and-seek he was forced to play with the chittering creatures - even if losing meant he had to go hungry.

So that was why he paid very close attention to these badniks. They were all garish machines, the defenders of Carnival Night Zone: electric blue clams that spat balls of rust at their foes; diminutive, shuffling tubes of chrome that flashed lightning white before teleporting onto the ceiling; and the bats. With polymer wings and tungsten eyes, they swooped down upon on the fox cub, three against one.

Drenched with rain, Knuckles observed it all from his high vantage point, clinging to the slick blue steel of a probability spindle. Over the past eleven days, he had never had the opportunity to see Sonic or his childish, orange companion actually take on the robots. Eggman had ordered him to avoid the duo whenever possible; badniks could be replaced, whereas the last echidna could not. Knuckles didn't know whether to feel grateful or insulted at the Doctor's concern for his safety… but he knew, now, not to dissent with his friend where Sonic was concerned. Robotnik knew how to deal with the hedgehog. Besides, Knuckles was too busy checking the traps, co-ordinating the ambushes, or even returning to Launch Base Zone to direct the badnik work crews, as Ivo franticly pushed his repairs forward. The Doctor was determined to make his Death Egg spaceworthy again, before the hedgehog reached its Cradle.

Until today, the juvenile fox had seemed an unlikely accessory to Sonic's murderous rampage. But given what he was seeing now… the kit could fight, Knuckles would give him that. Tails was a whirling dervish of fur and ferocity, leaping across the jauntily-coloured metal plating as the three badniks closed in. They were smart enough to circle round, beforehand, attacking the fox from an angle, where the harsh glare of a neon discharge lamp forced Tails to squint, as their winged silhouettes dived towards him.

The fox duck-and-rolled, letting the first two bats swoop past, before exploding into a roundhouse kick. His outstretched sneaker smashed the third machine out of the air; whipping round behind him, the creature's twin tails swatted down the second as well. Both robots plunged out of sight, lost in the electric luminance.

The lead badnik, however, was unfazed by its comrades' destruction. Faster than its flesh and blood opponent, the cruel automaton banked abruptly, bringing its titanium claws with range of the spinning fox. Razorblade talons gouged a gruesome furrow across the kit's back, and Tails tumbled over with a cry, blood and rings splashing onto the multicoloured plating of Carnival Night.

The Guardian chuckled. He _did _like bats.

And with his accomplice down, Sonic would…

Tails levered himself up on his elbows. The fox's shoulders were shaking, his fur shimmering with rain and crimson. The batbot's wings laboured under the deluge, as it fluttered cautiously above, recalculating.  
He narrowed his eyes. The kit breathed in, and out, like Sonic had taught him. Honed by pain and adrenaline, his vulpine senses were diamond-sharp. The tiniest of smiles curled onto his face, as he watched the machine wobble in the sky. Flapping flight. How second-rate.  
There were some things Sonic couldn't teach. Hedgehogs were scavengers by nature, but foxes… foxes were predatory. Tails ran his tongue over his teeth, the sharp incisors, and the sharper canines. Foxes had killer instinct… and the equipment to back it up.

He lay there, watching, as the moments ticked past. The badnik weaved back and forth, edging towards him, preparing for a mortal blow. Closer… closer…

He pushed off. Not with his hands or feet, but with his strongest limbs: two tails. The force sprang him upwards, an orange rocket blasting through the curtain of rain. His opponent had no time to swerve, as the fox's fangs sank into the turquoise plastic of its wing. With a wrench of his jaw, Tails tore the mechanical limb clean off the bat's chassis.

It would have been far more impressive, Knuckles thought, if he hadn't bungled the ending. But Tails slipped on the steel plates as he landed, his sneakered feet sliding from under him, and the fox plonked down on his butt in a rather undignified manner. " Pffth… Oww-w-w-w" he moaned, spitting shreds of polymer out of his mouth as he picked himself up, rubbing his behind.

Pathetic. The Guardian almost, _almost_, dropped down on the fox right then, to finish the job. But Ivo had been most insistent. He wouldn't risk his greatest asset, his most able lieutenant, until the very end, after wounds and weariness had taken their toll on the duo. The holocaust in Angel Island hadn't worked; so they would wear the intruders down, until victory was absolutely certain.

Besides, the chance was already gone. Tails had sped off, with a whir of his rotary namesakes. All he left was a smear of blood on the metalwork, and the fallen remains of the last batbot, struggling uselessly in a puddle of rainwater and oil.

If it hadn't been a bat, he wouldn't have bothered. But, with Tails departed, the Guardian clambered down from his lofty perch, to see what he could do for the ruined badnik. Not much, he expected; but the Eggman had shown him something of robotics over the months they had shared together. Daunting schematics and uncomfortable words; but Knuckles had tried, he really had. Ivo had laughed when they shocked themselves with a flux capacitor; he had beamed when the echidna correctly identified a diode, a radiator, and a logic gate on the circuit diagram. The Doctor was a good teacher. Knuckles was just ashamed _he_ was a lousy student.

Kneeling down besides the jerking badnik, Knuckles quickly saw that his efforts would be wasted. The lights in its eyes were dimming; its mechanical shudders getting weaker and weaker. Whatever strange battery powered the machine, it was fading fast.

Morbid curiosity made him extend his hand forwards, poking at the damaged rivulets that held the artificial creature together. With a terminal wheeze of servo-actuators, the batbot's chest cavity popped open, and for the first time, the Guardian beheld what lay inside.

He threw up.

* * *

**Day 412: MY 11.012**

Robotnik rubbed his temples, grimacing as the jaunty music ate its way through his already ragged concentration. He hadn't slept in two days; hadn't slept _properly _in two weeks, relying on a cocktail of somnific barbituates to bring about the respite his body needed, but his brain would not allow. The dazzling lights of Carnival Night danced in his vision, vying with the statistical data scrolling up his screen. The hedgehog had pushed through _another_ firebreak, destroying the Zone's central data store: a thousand billion statistical conjectures, ground to dust simply because they got in Sonic's way. It still made the Doctor feel physically sick, even though he'd seen similar things happen so many times before.

"_THE ECHIDNA APROACHES,_" his escort announced, their nine voices buzzing in unison. "Good," the Doctor rumbled, giving voice to his thoughts in his weariness. "I needed to speak with him anyway; we have to extend the operations in Endless Mine again, so I want-"

Knuckles plunged his fist into the Eggrobo's chest plating, twisting his wrist as he did so. The android exploded in a storm of metal fragments, all except the armoured front casing, which was locked into the Guardian's spiked gauntlet. Swinging his arm up, the echidna used the curved breastplate to block a particle beam fired by the robots' partner; it reflected off the improvised shield, lancing through the centre of a third robot's frame, and boring a smoking hole straight through to the other side. Wrenching the panel off his glove, the crimson animal hurled it towards another Eggrobo, just raising its gun; the spinning projectile embedded itself deep into the android's metal face. Knuckles launched himself into the air, as bolts of crackling power tore through the metal where he'd been standing.  
The echidna's eyes had remained fixed on Eggman the entire time.

"HOLD!" Robotnik roared, raising his hand in a commanding gesture. Whether the order was directed at the Guardian or the Eggrobos was unclear; while the latter could not disobey, the former certainly could – and did. He dropped down on top of the gargantuan scientist, driving him to the cold steel floor of the Carnival.

Six smoking gun barrels remained trained onto the echidna's head, ready to burn this grotesque blasphemy off the Father's form, the instant He even _thought _to signal the directive.

"What have you done?" Knuckles howled, his eyes wild, his fists trembling as he grabbed at the Doctor's collar. It was Robotnik's turn to stare back impassive, while his accomplice shook him violently. "What have you done!? What have you _done_!?"

What _had _he done? Surprise and urgency had banished languor from the Doctor's mind, as he systematically deliberated what the echidna could possibly be screaming about. The Ring Apertures? No; the Guardian wouldn't understand those even if he had seen them, and certainly wouldn't hold _him_ responsible. The prisoners in Flying Battery? The secret excavations in Lava Reef? Or…

Ah.  
The badniks.

"What else have you lied to me about, _Eggman?_" Knuckles was hissing. The echidna's hot breath coursed through the bristles of the scientist's moustache."Why? Why did you have to do this to..."

"I was protecting you!" Ivo yelled. "I was protecting you from _this_, from how you're reacting now. You didn't need to know how they were powered. But you _do _need them here. We both do. Sonic would have-"

Robotnik thought it wouldn't have been possible for Knuckles to look angrier than he already did, but he was wrong. The echidna snarled, a harsh, guttural sound, his mouth an ugly slash in a face painted with fury.  
"You _presume _to tell me what I need to know? On _MY _island? I took you in, allowed you to stay here, where no outsider has had sanction in a hundred and fifty generations, and _this_ is how you repay me? With deceit? By violating my sacred responsibilities?! By enslaving my charges in walking crypts?!"

The Doctor sneered up at him from the metallised ground. His words were cold, and biting – not the tone of a man who, by all rights, should be begging for his life.  
"Don't deceive yourself, _'Guardian'_," he spat. "Only a cynic or a fanatic would call what I do 'enslavement'. Yes, I put your little creatures inside robots, I hooked their minds up to the over-grid and made them dance to my tune. But I did it on _your _watch. They were your responsibility, and you allowed this to happen. How did you _think _they were powered? How did you _think_ they could come off the factory floor, instantly combat-ready? Where, exactly, did you _think_ your scampering friends had 'emigrated' to?"

Knuckles' mouth worked, but no words came out. He was too angry. And yet; this… this wasn't how it was supposed to go. _He_ was calling _Ivo_ to account; not the other way around. "You told me they were safe." he growled, with more conviction than he truly felt. His skin crawled with the notion that… that Robotnik wasn't entirely wrong.  
Knuckles was sure he could sense the eyes of his ancestors upon him; accusatory. _They_ wanted to hear his explanation, of why he had failed to protect the creatures of the Island.  
"I didn't do this," the echidna whispered. But his fists released the scientist, and his shoulders slumped; he felt the strength draining out of him. "I… I didn't think…"

"YES," the Doctor stated, while he lifted up his arm, grabbing the Guardian's face in a single, massive hand.  
"You are precisely right, Knuckles." Ivo _gripped_, and levered himself up from where he had lain on the floor.  
"You didn't _think_." He rose to his feet, the Mobian's face still covered by the Doctor's palm.  
"You didn't _think _when you lived here alone for all those years, didn't _think_ what you would do if an enemy came that you couldn't just punch away." Robotnik stretched to his full height, lifting Knuckles off his feet as he raised his hand.  
"You didn't _think _to understand that Emerald you worship, didn't _think _that we might need to know how to work the crystal's interface." The Guardian just hung there, motionless in the scientist's grip, a puppet with his strings cut.  
"You didn't _think_, as long as you had your scriptures and your doctrines and your tales of lost glory. You didn't _think _to question me, because I made this Island strong again." The Eggman's face was a mask, belying no hint to his emotions, but the contempt oozed in his voice: a vicious tone, black as the glass that disguised his eyes.

"No-one…" he shook him,  
"but me…" harder,  
"ever…" and again,  
"**thinks**."

With that, Ivo released the echidna's skull, and Knuckles dropped onto the plated ground. It was a dismissive gesture, just opening his fingers, as if he were discarding a piece of trash. Robotnik turned away from the Guardian, as Knuckles landed on his backside, violet eyes wide. Eggman didn't want the wince to show on his face; the echidna was _heavy_, at over three feet of solid muscle. Holding him up in one hand had not been comfortable.

The Doctor sighed. His hatred had given him strength, burning through him, bright and seething. But now that the echidna wasn't trying to wring his neck, it slunk away to the deeps of his mind, quieted, leaving him in the company of his weariness once more. He really didn't have the time for theatrics like that. Or the biceps. Correcting his skewed glasses, Robotnik turned back to the supine creature, choosing his words with less vitriol.

"We need those badniks, Knuckles. If there were better power sources available to me, I would use them. But there are none. So I did what was necessary, because we _have_ to kill Sonic. You saw what he did, to your own people. Do you think the creatures of this island, and all the countless innocents down on Mobius below, will fare _better_ than this fate I give them, if someone like the hedgehog gets his hands on the Master Emerald? No. The end justifies the means, as it did when we burned the sky-shores."

With that, Eggman extended his hand towards the Guardian, holding it out, palm upwards.  
"Come on, my friend. Put your misguided outrage aside, and get up. We have work to do, you and I."

Knuckles didn't move. But he didn't flinch back, either, even though he desperately wanted to. The Defender of Angel Island - no, for it was burned, now - the Destroyer of Angel Island, simply closed his eyes at the Doctor's proffered glove. The cold of the floor seemed to seep up through him, into his very bones.

Robotnik made a tiny noise in the back of his throat, a sub-vocal grunt of disgust.  
"Fine, echidna," he muttered, "but you _know_ I speak the truth. We shall discuss this again, later. In the meantime, I have an Island to defend, if you aren't up to the task." The Doctor snapped his fingers at the Eggrobos, directing them with a complex series of hand gestures. Two of the robots holstered their guns, and lifted the Guardian up bodily.

Knuckles did not resist.


	6. Chapter 6: Hidden Palace Zone

**_Author's Note:_**

**_Well, _this _one snowballed as well, as I got towards the end. Many hundreds of words over my self-imposed wordcount.  
Sorry. It's a bit of a cra-a-a-azy rollercoaster as well.  
_****_Anyway... it's finished, now. So review it! Especially you mysterious people who ghost in my Reader Traffic stats, from Bulgaria and Japan and France-land (and, of course, the mountain of anonymous USA-sians). Don't make poor old STaR Productions and azngirlchibi do ALL the work penning me big long reviews. ;)_**

**_Much thanks to EVERYONE who has given me feedback over the course of this venture; Ri2, Feniiku, Ryan Duran, Awdures, Authorized, and the aforementioned. I could have done it without you, but it wouldn't have been nearly as fun. :)  
_****_Everyone else; it's not to late! Repent your sins, and review, lest the Eggrobos burn you for your blasphemy!_**

* * *

**Day 431: MY 11.031**

A black hedgehog staggered down the passageway, legs weak, breathing ragged. Crystals glowed gently in the corridor walls; white and purple, white and purple, refracting the strange emanations of the Master Emerald down to visible wavelengths. The dark creature stumbled onwards. Lines of red streaked his charcoal fur, barely distinguishable in the dim gem-light.

"Almost there, Sonic… almost there…" panted the young fox who supported him. Tails, like his elder brother, sported fur as black as night. Burns and cuts crowded every inch of the kit's weary form; one of his tails hung limp and motionless behind him, dragging through the ashen rubble. He couldn't feel the thing at all; and he was _glad_. The rest of him hurt so badly already…

And he had gotten off lightly. Sonic… Sonic was hurt bad. _Really _bad. Tails could feel the red patches in his brother's blackened coat; he could feel their dampness, seeping into the fur of his own shoulders. He struggled to keep the hedgehog upright, struggled to keep them both moving forward.

It had been Eggman. The Death Egg's main cannons, at maximum output, had the power to reduce a planet to slag – or so the Doctor had bragged, back in Hilltop Zone, what seemed like an eternity ago. And he had fired them _inside _the volcano, aiming for just two Mobians. _Two_. And even after that, even with his fur smouldering in the heat, Sonic had fought their old enemy once again, as Robotnik toyed with the lava flow beneath them.

Sonic coughed, weakly; although, in his condition, it was more of a long-drawn out wheeze. Tails could have sworn he saw smoke trailing out from the corner of the hedgehog's mouth.

The fox shuffled onwards. There was a light at the end of the tunnel, soft and gold, and spinning.

* * *

Sonic breathed in, and out, the way he had taught Tails. Stay calm; just breathe. In… and out. It was a simple thing, but it helped clear the mind. Sonic didn't want to remember it; remember brushing a hand through his own coat, and watching the blackened fur _fall out_. The Death Egg's cannons were neither quick nor clean weapons. Not by a long shot.

Sonic shook his head violently; both to derail the morbid train of thought, and to slough off the few burnt strands still lodged in his revitalised blue pelt. His saviour was doing the same; dusting the charred fur out of his tails, revealing the white tips underneath. Grinning, Sonic messed the hair on the top of Tails' head, dislodging a shower of soot.

"You okay, lil' dude? All your tails where they're supposed to be?" the hedgehog asked. With childish diligence, the fox traced them back to the base of his spine, delivering a forceful thumbs-up and a matching smirk to his friend after he confirmed that yes, they _were_ both still attached.

"All here, all working, Sonic!" he replied. By means of demonstration, the kit somersaulted into the air, and, with a whirl of his tails, he was aloft, bourn upwards by their blurred rotation.

Being able to fly again was _awesome_. In the tunnels of Lava Reef, and the pyramids of Sandopolis, his tails had been relegated to fan duty; besides, claustrophobic underground passageways didn't really leave much room for taking off. But _now_… Tails laughed as he kicked his feet, just to prove they weren't touching anything. He had never gotten over how _cool _flying was; not that his bro would let him forget. Since they'd been on the Floating Island, he was getting stronger at it, as well; he could even haul Sonic up with him, for a little while.

"_How's the weather up there, Tails?_" the hedgehog yelled, barely audible over the vertical distance, and the _thumpthumpthump _of the fox's rotors. "_See anything interesting?_"

That was an understatement.  
"Radical," the fox breathed to himself. The cavern was enormous, yawning dark and silent around him. Directly below was Sonic, and the broken circle of rings they'd been standing in. Further out, there were ruins; collapsed pillars, and the remnants of buildings clad in jade and precious stones. And over it all, a verdigris glow, coming from somewhere Tails couldn't quite see.

"The floor's all covered with pictures!" he shouted, turning his head back to Sonic. "And there's something glowi-"

The echidna came out of nowhere. He slammed into Tails bodily, knocking the kit right out of the sky. They tumbled together, as they fell; a blur of red and orange and fur and fists. Knuckles was punching, the entire time, at the fox's head, his legs, and his chest.  
He didn't have the slightest shred of mercy for this kid, as he felt young bones snap under the barrage. _That_, he had learnt in Carnival Night, from the Doctor: remorseless.  
For whatever reason, the fox had chosen his path.  
And now, he was going to die for it.

They hit the floor with crushing force, ploughing straight through the brittle mortar of a minor fresco. Dust and shattered tiles exploded outwards, the muted thud of impact ringing out across the silent expanse of the Hidden Palace. Mosaic pieces bounced across the ground like ceramic rainfall, and then, everything was still again.

Except for Sonic. Surprise and horror had paralysed him for a full second, but then, he was there, at the edge of the dust-filled pit. The hedgehog's eyes scanned desperately, searching through the cloud of grains for some sign of… of either of them.

There. Orange. Tails! As if sensing his urgency, the dust cleared out of the air just enough for Sonic to make out the fox's beaten form. There was blood in the kid's fur… but he was breathing. The hedgehog felt relief flooding into him as Tails' chest rose and fell. He was okay. But where was-

Knuckles burst out of the ground right beneath him, torrents of dirt and sand cascading through his dishevelled dreads. _He burrowed! _was all Sonic had chance to think, before the echidna smashed his face with a furious uppercut. The blue creature felt something fracture in his jaw, and then he was in the air. Knuckles' punch threw him in an arcing parabola; over Tails' hole, over the shattered mosaic, over a row of broken pillars. Sonic could see Robotnik's face in the Death Egg, crashed atop the mouth of the volcano, as his trajectory peaked. And then the floor, approaching quite rapidly…

Knuckles' expression didn't change, as he watched the hedgehog sail away through the green-tinted air. It didn't change when the hedgehog landed, perfectly, his red sneakers soaking up the momentum of impact, and springing the murderous blue creature back, towards him. It didn't change as he raised his fists, watching Sonic tear across the distance, coloured shards and dust billowing in his slipstream as he ran.

It was an expression of hatred.

He was _here_. He was here, at the final sanctum. An uninvited outsider was itself a terrible blasphemy in this holy chamber; but _Sonic?_ The one who had killed so many, down on the surface; who had destroyed so much, once he got here. The one who struck terror into the heart of Knuckles' only companions, the Emerald _and_ the Doctor; the one who now sought to take both of them away from him.

Still a hundred metres away, Sonic leapt. The Guardian allowed his wrathful grimace to change, fractionally, towards a quirk of a smile. It was exactly what he'd expected the hedgehog to do. As the interloper curled himself up into a spinning ball of spikes and sharpness, his visibility would reduce phenomenally – long enough for Knuckles to give him a taste of his own medicine.

His boots, a home-made patchwork of clownish, clashing colours, weren't tailored to this technique, as were his opponents; but their serrated climbing grip was all he needed. The echidna curled as well; and span. And span. And span.

He didn't have all frictionless quills Sonic used for this, either; but Knuckles made it work, twitching his dreadlocks just as he did for gliding, letting the air spiral around him, a self-reinforcing dynamo of circular momentum. The Guardian cycled up – to turbo speed.

The tiles fractured under Knuckles' spinning form, as the hedgehog cannoned into him. But Sonic had nothing to soak up his momentum; the blue sphere ricocheted off its sanguine counterpart. In midair, Sonic uncurled, shocked, desperate to see what had happened. The echidna had just _turboed _him? Used _his_ move?

The hedgehog landed, and then, the Guardian was on him again, charging forward, fist drawn back, violet eyes blazing with fanatical hatred. But Sonic was faster; Sonic was _always _faster. He ducked away from the incoming blow, and his hand caught Knuckles' outstretched forearm. The echidna twisted, attempting to maintain his balance, but the blue hero was ready for it. While the Guardian certainly had the edge in power, Sonic was no slouch either. Drawing his free hand back, the hedgehog smashed his fist square into the white crescent on Knuckles' chest.

It almost broke his wrist.

Punching the echidna was like punching a wall. Knuckles simply grunted; and, from the look in his eyes, it was less a sound of pain than of amusement. Sonic tried to draw his injured hand back, but the Guardian had anticipated his reflex. Shrugging off the hedgehog's hold, Knuckles lashed out, and grabbed the hand in his own glove.  
And squeezed.

The hedgehog's howl of agony echoed off the viridian surfaces of the palace. It was exceptionally satisfying sound. Tightening his grip, the echidna felt bones in Sonic's fist pop out of position. He smiled sadistically, watching the colour drain out of his opponent's face.  
"_Do not toy with them_," Ivo had instructed. "_The moment you get the chance: kill them. Kill them both._" But surely his mentor wouldn't begrudge him a lit-

The fox rammed into his side, with far more force than Knuckles would have thought him capable. Sonic was snatched out of his grip, as Tails' lightning assault sent the two of them rolling across the mosaic floor, an entangled ball of combat. Together, they slammed into the jade steps of the Emerald chamber. Knuckles yelled as the creature sank his teeth into a dreadlock. Fighting back, the Guardian kicked Tails in the ribs, once, twice, three times, making sure to strike in the same positions he'd punched earlier, to maximise the pain inflicted. Eventually, the fox released him; Tails' fangs were soaked with blood, though whether it was his or the echidna's, Knuckles couldn't tell. Probably both.

Risking a glance over his shoulder, the Guardian saw that Sonic was down, courtesy of five mangled digits Knuckles had left inside the hedgehog's bloodstained glove. But he couldn't rely on him to stay there for long. He had to deal with Tails quickly. And permanently.

"Robotnik's... been lying... to you" the kit wheezed. It was, Knuckles realised, the first time any of them had spoken during the fight. But they had been through all this before, from Angel Island to Lava Reef; over and over. The echidna was tired of their arguments.

So, by way of response, he smashed Tails' head against the steps.  
The fox made a visceral, raging noise, and lashed out. Knuckles parried the blow easily, and bashed his opponent into the jade surface again. "I'm not here to reason with you," he hissed, looking straight into Tails' terrified eyes. "I'm here to kill you." One more smash would break the thief's skull like an egg.

But then...  
Knuckles roared, his hands flying from Tails' head to claw at his own ears. The Guardian's vision swam, and his fingers jerked involuntarily, their nerves firing wildly.  
All his life, he had never been more than a few kilometres from the Master Emerald, and the Palace's control plinth. He could feel the gem, in his head; nothing so fanciful as telepathy, but the synapses in his brain were attuned to its signals. The benign radiation that washed out of the crystal was as much a part of him as his own beating heart.

It had just stopped.  
After four hundred and thirty-one days, Robotnik had made his move.

* * *

Sonic forced himself back to his feet. He was trying very, very hard not to look at the end of his arm. The glove was completely red with blood; and it felt like the cloth was the only thing keeping his hand together.  
But he'd survived worse.  
Hadn't he?

All of a sudden, something shifted in the light. The green tint in the air changed, fractionally; a sickly, darker hue. But… maybe… maybe that was just the nausea talking…  
Through a haze of pain, the hedgehog focused on the steps where Knuckles and Tails were fighting. Pixel-brain must have done something; the red maniac was clutching his head, eyes screwed up. Taking his chance, Sonic advanced.

And Knuckles threw Tails at him.

The hedgehog tried to catch his brother as best he could, one-handed, but it was a doomed effort; the two friends still landed in an entangled heap. Sonic was up first, anticipating an attack. Instead, he saw Knuckles running up the steps where he'd just tried to brain Tails. Sonic didn't intend to let him get away; not again. Beside him, the fox jumped to his feet.

"You cool, buddy?" the hedgehog asked. Tails' scalp was caked with blood, and he was blinking far more often than a healthy creature should. But the kit's jaw was set, determined; his eyes focused on the retreating echidna, with feral intensity.  
Tails nodded.

They ran towards the Emerald chamber.

* * *

No! _NO!_

It took Knuckles a few seconds to recognise that the voice screaming in his head was in his ears as well. It was his own. The echidna didn't want to process, didn't want to _accept_, what was happening.

He was clinging to the Master Emerald.  
And it wasn't on the altar.

That in itself would have been inconceivable. The gem had not moved from that plinth for four thousand years; it… _it_ _kept the Island afloat! _Preventing the separation of Emerald and altar was the entire _purpose _of the Guardian; the entire purpose of his life.

And it wasn't Sonic's doing. It was _Ivo_.

The Egg-O-Matic sprouted a huge, orange claw from its underbelly; hydraulic compressors shielded under plasma-steel plating. The grapples clasped the Master Emerald, and secondary crystals adhered to its surface, broken shards wrenched away from the plinth's interface. Knuckles snatched at them, desperate for handholds; the Emerald itself was almost impossible to grip.

He was climbing up the holy jewel, climbing towards his erstwhile friend and tutor. 'It could just be a mistake! He could be trying to keep it from Sonic!' a part of him clamoured. But it wasn't a mistake. Knuckles knew this with crushing certainty. He could see it in the Doctor's face, as he wrestled with the controls mere metres above him.

_This was what he had planned all along._

"Ah, the Guardian_ finally_ makes his appearance." Robotnik mocked, peering over the side of his floating machine as he compensated for the Emerald's pseudo-mass. The scientist's moustache twitched when he caught sight of Sonic and Tails, hurrying into the Emerald chamber.  
"You didn't kill _either _of them?" Ivo hissed, all amusement dropped from his tone. "Why did I _bother_ chasing them here, then?"

The Eggman toggled switches on his control panel, shaking his head with casual coolness. "Echidna, I can't say I'm particularly impressed with your performance. You've failed your wards, you've failed your ancestors, you've failed as a Guardian; but now you've failed _me_."

Sonic had been holding back, _physically _holding Tails back, to see how this would play out. They couldn't take on Lard-Bucket _and_ his lieutenant at the same time; not in their condition. But it looked like the Doctor was finally showing his true colours to the echidna. He yelled a warning to Knuckles, as metallic tendrils snaked out of the Egg-O-Matic's sides. But the Guardian wasn't paying any attention to him.

"_WHY!?_" Knuckles roared. His face was a picture of anguish, riven by pain and incredulity, tears carving tracks through the dust and dried blood around his eyes. And again, quieter. Begging. "Why?"

Robotnik leaned back over the side of the pod, to meet Knuckles' eyes once again. The scientist shook his head. There was no mockery in the gesture, this time. He actually looked… disappointed.  
"You're as blind as the hedgehog, if you need to ask me that question," Ivo sighed. "After all this time, still, you do not _understand _who I am."

The Doctor flipped a switch, and the electro-polarizability tendrils crackled to life.

* * *

**Day 432: MY 11.032**

One moment, the jade and jewels of Hidden Palace Zone; the next, Tails was falling face-first towards yellowed, moss-covered stones. The Echidnean teleporters, according to Sonic, were a lot less unpleasant than Robotnik's; the fox couldn't see how that was possible, as he landed on cracked stones. His fractured ribs screamed at him; blood trickled out of the kit's mouth, and the wound in the side of his head, staining the lichen an angry red.

Reluctantly, _very _reluctantly, the fox turned his body sideways on the floor, to be greeted by a void of blue. They were above the clouds, even higher than the rest of the Floating Island. Dawn etched a billowing cloudscape with golden light, reflecting off ice crystals and… other, more sinister things.

The Death Egg rose through the blanket of haze, wisps of moisture clawing at the dark steel of its immense hull. It was as though the sky itself was desperately trying to prevent the Doctor's escape, vainly attempting to pull back the huge sphere of metal, and the stolen Master Emerald.

Voices, behind him.

Sonic, angry. "…see?! Everything, _everything_ he told you was a lie. We've never _seen _another like you, and I certainly didn't slaughter any village! We don't _want _the Master Emerald! Just tell us which way to go! We'll stop him; we'll bring it back!"

"No you won't." That was Knuckles. The echidna hadn't spoken to them, after Robotnik's betrayal. They had simply followed him, the three of them limping through maze-like passageways under Hidden Palace.  
"You can't take it from him. He's already launched. And even if you could, _you_ wouldn't give it back." He sounded tired. Almost as tired as Tails felt. That moss looked very inviting… comfortable…

Sonic growled with frustration. "How can just one guy be _this _stupid? Even if you believe that, even _if_ you still think we want to steal it; would you really prefer that Eggman has the Emerald? From your point of view, Knucklehead, it's us or him."

Silence.

"Aren't you supposed to be the Guardian, or something? _He's getting away!_"

More silence. And then:

"Destroy him." Spoken quietly.  
"Destroy him. Burn his home, erase his tribe, tear down everything he's ever built. His friends, his family… make… him…"  
Knuckles' voice trailed off. His words were hollow; it sounded like he was saying them only because he felt he had to.

"No can do, Red." Sonic replied. "Didn't the fat guy tell you? There aren't any other hoo-mans down there. He's the only one of his kind."

No reply. Tails was still watching the Death Egg rise, with casual disregard for gravity. Tiny lights flared at its equator, as the Eggrobos launched.

Sonic saw them too. Leaving Knuckles to deal with his shock on his own time, Sonic jogged over to where Tails lay, and hefted the kit up with his one good hand. The other one still hung useless, a soggy pulp of blood and fabric.

"Come on, buddy," he said, supporting Tails as the fox's feet dragged along the ground. "No-one ever taught Sonic the Hedgehog when it was time to give up."

* * *

**Day 546: MY 11.146**

"…_initially placed as a means of remote detection and absorption of the hyperspatial interstices generated by ring manifestation, the negentropic collimators, or 'lamp-posts', have developed a profound and important secondary application, which has become more and more exploitable as the design has been augmented in latter deployments. Though, in retrospect, detailed analysis of __d41_**/**_77__.9 and Proof 612 in d74/52.2 would have demonstrated the principle: charge it with enough rings, and the lamp-posts open up a gateway to the Special Zones._

_The hemi-dimensional worlds thus accessible represent an astonishing variety of pocket universes, promising revolutionary paradigm shifts in the very fundamentals of non-Euclidian topology studies. While the development of manufacturing capacity _inside_ Special Zones is untenable, thanks to the gateway's temperamental nature and prohibitively expensive activation costs, staggering military and computational possibilities might be realized by tapping…_"

The recording petered out. Knuckles twisted a dial, the plastic nub blackened and misshapen. Ivo's voice crackled out of the tiny speaker once again.

"…_initially placed as a means of remote detection and absorbtion of the hyperspatial interstices genertatd by…_"

The Guardian munched on a grapefruit as he listened, and gazed out from his grassy perch onto the verdant, busy canopy of Angel Island Zone. Not everything had perished in the Flying Battery's attack; patches of rainforest had weathered the firestorm, and now vigorous new-growth trees sprouted from the fertile ashes of their predecessors. Animal cries filled the air again, as those creatures once locked inside robotic bodies returned home, and settled back into their jungle niches.

"…_activation_ _costs_, _staggering military and computational possibilities might be realized by tapping_..."

Again, Knuckles rewound the recording, and it began anew.  
He had lost count of the number of times he'd listened to this piece of junk. The Guardian knew he should really throw it away; cast it back into the rusting scrapheaps of Launch Base or Chrome Gadget or Carnival Night where he'd found it.

The badniks had mostly tidied themselves up, slinking back to the metal Zones, to degrade and die in great huddles of steel. Not all of them, of course; the final Eggrobos had hounded him even after Tails returned the Master Emerald; playing out their higher-level programming as best they could without the Doctor's controlling hand.  
But the conventional badniks, those that had been churned out by the thousand from the Island's manufactories… they were lost without their creator and his algorithmic control. They had crawled to the lights, to the metal and the artifice, where their master had lived. Lost children, searching for the Father who never came home.

Knuckles rewound the sound-file again. He, too, was trying to find the Doctor, in the recording. Listening to the man's strange, booming voice; trying to find where his friend ended, and where his betrayer began.

"_He's the only one of his kind_," the hedgehog had said.  
Was that how Robotnik had known, that first day, in the meadow? The flash he'd seen in Knuckles' eyes… had he seen his own emotions reflected in the echidna? The loneliness? The solitude? Was that how he had manipulated him, with such mastery; because he knew first-hand what it felt like, to be _the last one_?

Everything else might have been lies, but the final words the Doctor had given him, as they spun through the Emerald Chamber - they were entirely accurate.  
He truly did not _understand _who Ivo Robotnik was.  
He did understand something, though. The Eggrobos, and Mecha-Sonic; they had hunted him mercilessly, even as the Death Egg exploded, and impossible lights flashed in the sky far, far above. His only friend had tried to kill him; of that, there was no doubt.

But not in the Emerald chamber.

The Doctor had shown him the Egg-O-Matic's control panel, back in the Launch Base lab, that day Knuckles had asked him about his father. Eggman had shown him the very weapons he used to shock the echidna off the great gem. He had shown him that the electric tendrils could blast a creature to atoms, at the mere flick of a switch.

He hadn't done it. He had used a lower yield.  
The Doctor had had the chance to kill Knuckles _himself_.  
And he didn't take it.

Maybe he'd feared damaging the Emerald.  
Maybe it had been mercy.  
Maybe he'd hoped Knuckles would finish Sonic off, even afterwards.  
Maybe it had been a final act of spite, to deny the Guardian a noble death.  
Maybe he'd wanted to make Knuckles live with his shame, and his failure.

Once more, the echidna rewound the tape. He'd been sat here for hours, just listening. _Thinking_, like Ivo had told him to do. But now the day was drawing on; it was time to move, check some other Zone of the Island. His old routine had reasserted itself easily, now that he was alone again.

The Defender of Angel Island stood up, and walked away, carrying Ivo's voice with him. Birds cheeped and frogs croaked, as he left; just as they had for four thousand years.


End file.
